


the building and the street and the town would let go at last

by anatomied



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Dishonored AU, Fake AH Crew, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:08:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8826166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatomied/pseuds/anatomied
Summary: Ray and the gang he calls family run a tiny piece of Dunwall, because Dunwall post-rat plague is a city divided up by factions. So everyone gets their fingers into the ground where they can. Everything is fine. Even when a man in a skull mask almost kills Ray, and then gets hired onto the crew - everything is still fine.





	1. the stomach of that still-unclassified beast

**Author's Note:**

> It's time for that AU that no one asked for. Yet I delivered anyway. So for the 3.5 other people on this planet that _also_ have a vested interest in both the Dishonored universe and Achievement Hunter and where those two might intersect, here you go. I did my best with two very different universes.

When he was young, and when he still lived in coastal Karnaca, Ray had never believed all that much in the Abbey of the Everyman. At the time, it was a stupid teenage thing - refusing authority and all that shit. He didn’t want anyone telling him anything about what was right or wrong. But once he had ended up out on the street, he had spent a lot of time navigating abandoned parts of the city.

Years later, he still remembers this one time - he was thirteen, maybe, and scaling up the side of a low building. An open window of the next building over, condemned and worn down, was level with the roof he was on. So of course Ray had leapt for it, scrabbling over the ledge and tumbling into what had once been someone’s home.

Everything was pristine. It looked like whoever lived here had just picked up and left. Dust floated through the whole place. Of course, his first thought: _perfect place to hole up for the night, fuck yeah_.

In the bedroom he found something else.

It was maybe a lectern of some kind, but strips of purple fabric attached to the ceiling billowed out on some impossible wind. Burnt out candles rested all around the room. On the altar, if that was what it was called, there were several pieces of something glinting in that off-white way bone did. Something had been carved or burnt into the bone - a symbol, the symbol every three year old in Karnaca could identify as a bad, bad thing. The Outsider’s mark.

Ray froze. As much as he liked to denounce the Abbey with his few friends, there was something different between that and then _seeing_ evidence of the Abbey’s boogeyman.

His breath huffed out low and frantic.

Something had almost touched him on the back of the neck. Or nothing touched him, but it felt like something was trying its damnedest to.

For a few beats he forced his body to remain still. Fingers on his shoulders, soft and deliberate.

He ran. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about. Ray had taken one step back, and then two, and booked it right back out the window and down into the street.

He doesn’t like to remember that moment - that primal fear that had fallen on him like rubble, the earth shifting underneath his feet. He still doesn’t believe in the Abbey. But he believes that there’s _something_ , out there in the sea and the dirt and the air.

\---

Ray hates Dunwall with a kind of pure fire that might even make the Abbey back home happy.

People who have lived their whole lives in Dunwall, like Geoff, say they hate Dunwall, but they don’t _really_ hate it. Their hatred is reserved for the City Watch, or the Overseers, or the royal family, or the rats. They hate pieces - not the whole. But Ray’s from Karnaca, which means when he thinks of home, he doesn’t think of cities that flood within a few feet of rainfall in some districts because the city can’t be damned to repair anything. He thinks of ports, and sunlight, and water warm enough to make him feel sick every time he looks out at the freezing ocean surrounding Dunwall.

Geoff tells the crew sometimes that it’s just the fact that the city is still cleaning itself up after the rat plague.

Every time, Ray wants to call out Geoff’s shit. Dunwall’s always been like this. This is just how the city works. But it works well for nameless people like them - thieves, pickpockets, criminals.

Today, for example. Geoff left Ray with a contract to take out some major aristocrat that likes to frequent the Golden Cat. This could mean just about any aristocrat, to be honest, because every single one of them has ended up at the Golden Cat at least once. This one’s specific, though. His name’s Benjamin Morrow, apparently, and he’s fond of a really, really bright red coat. Dark hair, green eyes, a little under six feet tall, likes to wear hats.

Ray has made himself comfortable on a rooftop across the street. The crossbow that Gavin and Jack have been collaborating on for years, constantly upgrading and adjusting it until the weight and balance is perfect, sits on the pipes in front of him. Ray himself is the only one who uses it, really, but that just means he’s earned the rights to adjust it.

He shifts his grip on the spyglass a little, adjusting until his view of the Golden Cat’s entrance clears.

According to the information he bought from their contact in the Distillery District, Morrow usually leaves sometime after two.

It takes a few more minutes until the door to the Cat swings open. A swish of a coat - red brighter than blood. Ray sets down the spyglass with a soft clink of metal on metal and squints through his own glasses. The crossbow fits easily into his hands. It’s a difficult shot. No rooftop angle facing the Golden Cat’s entrance was perfect. The wind has picked up a little since earlier the morning.

Were he anyone else, Ray might say that it was an impossible shot. But it’s not impossible to him.

He changes positions slightly, shuffling a few feet to the left. His shoes scrape along the roof. He crouches down a little lower, wriggling over to the edge of the roof and aiming. They affixed a particularly small spyglass to the top of the crossbow a few months ago. It’s not perfect. He has to compensate by aiming around six inches above where he should, but it brings the line of sight in closer.

In the street, Benjamin Morrow tilts his head upwards as if welcoming the wind. He takes a stupid-looking hat out of his coat pocket.

“Sorry, Ben,” Ray murmurs to no one but himself.

He pulls the trigger. Then he pulls the spyglass’s aim down in time to see the bolt hit the man in the side of the head. It punctures, clean and bloody all at once.

The coat billows as he falls.

The two City Watch guards walking by instantly pull out their swords. One of them spins around as if trying to find the source of the bolt. He can see the Overseer’s neck twitch and throb as the man begins to tilt his head upwards. _Where the fuck_ -

Definitely time to go.

\---

It’s actually pretty funny that the Fakes have managed to find themselves a slaughterhouse in the Old Waterfront. They used to live in Slaughterhouse Row itself, after all, before the rat plague, and before all of Geoff’s old guys except for Jack ended up dead due to plague or the Watch being a little overzealous in those days. So now it’s them: Geoff, Michael, Gavin, Jack, and Ray.

There’s little they don’t do for coin.

Dunwall itself knows the headlines by heists. They’ve stolen from the aristocrats. They steal from the newly rebuilt Financial District all the time. But on the side, they do just about everything else. Ray and Michael will kill whoever’s necessary. Geoff and Gavin strike deals. Jack builds contraptions to try and take advantage of the last remaining tallboys. The Fakes try not to take on other gangs all that much, mostly because five specialized guys does not make the kind of army that might take on the Bottle Street Thugs.

But it’s Ray’s crew. They have one slaughterhouse to their name and every time a heist goes through like clockwork, it’s better than half a dozen random pieces of coin from every other job.

He tosses down the crossbow and the spyglass onto the stupidly oversized table in the main room. It’s actually that big because it’s three other tables, none of which are actually the same height, width, or length shoved together. It takes Ray a few moments longer to unbuckle his sword, but that ends up on the table too. His crossbow’s covering up Kingsparrow Island on the map of Dunwall in the center of the table, but that’s fine.

Michael and Gavin are playing some card game at the smaller table in the corner.

Jack’s bent over what looks like a piece of a tallboy in the corner. Light from whale oil is turning everything blue in his corner of the warehouse.

That’s another thing Ray hates about Dunwall. Everyone fucking loves whale oil.

Geoff walks back into the room with yet another bottle of whiskey. “Ray!” he bellows. “How’d it go?”

“Good.” Ray pulls a stool up to the table, moving the crossbow a little closer to him. “Guy’s dead.”

“Perfect,” Geoff continues, still yelling even though they’re maybe a foot apart. “I’m glad. Want a drink?”

“You know I don’t -.”

“Perfect,” Geoff says again. This time he directs it to his own bottle of whiskey as he heads back off towards the area that has been designated as the kitchen.

Jack comes over and leans against the table, picking up the crossbow. “Geoff got good news. The Hatters are being pushed out of the Drapers Ward, so we might have a chance to slip in behind the Guard and take over once everything dies down.” He turns it over in his hand. “Did that new trigger work okay?”

“Yeah,” Ray nods, reaching for the one of the apples in a bowl on the edge of the table. “Fucking perfect. Thanks for putting that together. It made a huge difference.”

Jack nods. He picks up the crossbow gently and turns it over in his hands. “I’ll make sure everything survived the trip back here, then.”

Off to the side, Michael starts cursing a blue streak and pretty much throws his cards at Gavin. Gavin squawks a little and ducks underneath a few that fly up in the air even as the rest drift down to the table and the ground. “Michael,” he yelps.

“Outsider’s balls,” Michael spits as he starts picking up cards again. “Ray? You want to try to beat this squirmy little fucker?”

“Listen, you know no one beats Gavin at this shit.”

“Just help me win something tonight, asshole.”

Jack gives him an apologetic smile. Ray sighs as dramatically as possible and gets up. And he goes.

\---

A week later, a job actually goes wrong for Ray for the first time in recent memory.

It’s another contract hit, this time in the Financial District. These are usually fun. It’s the area Ray knows like the back of his hands after weeks of heist preparation. So he’s up on a low rooftop, watching crowds and eating a Tyvian pear. The weather’s nice for once. Sunlight is even almost peeking through the clouds.

It is a damned perfect day.

His target’s a woman today - some major financial player that someone else wants taken out. Ray checks his crossbow.

Around an hour into surveying the streets, Ray hears footsteps behind him.

He swings around, pulling the crossbow to rest in the holster on his back, just in time to see this huge guy in a mask just _up on the roof_ , up on _his roof_ , and Ray doesn’t even have time to ask what the fuck is going on before the guy pulls a sword and advances.

Ray does two things. He yanks out his sword out and tucks his glasses inside that pocket in his coat Jack added after the first few times they had to get Ray new glasses. It’s only for farsighted shit anyway. The enemy is right here.

His heart climbs into his throat. Because this doesn’t happen. No one knows where he is, and no one knows why he’s there, especially not some tall guy in a - is that a skull mask - with an overdramatic coat on. Especially not one of those types that’s here to apparently kill him, with the way that he pulls out a pistol as soon as he sees Ray’s sword.

“Nice way to bring a gun to a sword fight, fucker,” Ray says, and promptly wants to destroy his own brain. If he’s lucky, skull mask here might do it for him.

The guy tilts his head and then tosses the pistol off to the side. Ah. A gentleman murderer. Quaint.

Ray takes the advantage and presses forward, coming in low, and the guy parries him like it’s nothing. Shit. This is not Ray’s specialty.

The guy’s fast and relentless, coming in with a complicated series of strikes. Ray plays it defensive, backpedaling and keeping himself from getting gutted in the meantime by a man who looks like he probably could eat City Watch members for breakfast.

He can’t keep this up. Ray’s already running out of sword techniques he’s any good with, and this guy seems like he’s barely even paying attention to what he’s doing. But he needs to reach the northeast corner of this building. So he keeps his feet moving, letting the guy press the advantage.

The assassin’s sword cuts along Ray’s arm. He falters for a minute, pain leaping up his shoulder. He bites down hard on the inside of his mouth and refuses to make a noise. There is no such thing as giving in. He learned that years ago - in Karnaca, and in arriving in Dunwall, and here, all over again.

They reach the corner of the building. The skull mask grins back at Ray blankly - it’s painted black, which is either edgy or to help his attacker blend in with the shadows. The guy comes in for a heavy overhead blow, Ray blocks just in time and pushes back, and that’s apparently enough of a surprise move where he manages to push his opponent back a few steps. The guy spins his sword like an overdramatic piece of shit, preparing to lunge.

Adrenaline pretty much tanks any chance of Ray’s brain-to-mouth filter doing its fucking job.

“You fucked up,” Ray tells his attempted murderer with the biggest grin he can muster. Then he throws himself backwards off the roof.

Hitting the surface of the canal feels like he might as well be hitting a slab of rock. For a second his vision dims, and Ray has enough of his mind left to know that he might've made a deadly mistake. Then it clears hazily.

Ray shuts his eyes as water fills in the space above him. He sinks for a second before he struggles to turn himself over. He only surfaces a few feet away once he’s securely underneath a bridge. If he had to guess, that guy’s probably leaning over the roof right now hoping to get a lucky shot with that pistol of his.

He gets back to the slaughterhouse late. He legitimately tries to look confident as he nudges open the well-hidden door, but water’s still dripping from his clothes. From the pain he's been dealing with all the way here, he probably twisted his ankle during the fall.

Geoff stares at him over a lantern. The entire room is looking at Ray, framed in the doorway. “What the fuck happened?”

“Some fucker tried to kill me,” Ray says, and his knees give out.


	2. something very nice and potentially lethal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long - but finals are done for me now so I have way more time to dedicate to this! It's a little shorter in order to get it out faster but the next few chapters should make up for it.

The entire crew except for Ray agrees that Ray has to be kept in the warehouse. Ray himself was not included in the discussion, because everyone knew he’d throw a fit. He hates it. Geoff makes it sound like it’s because of his ankle, but it’s really because no one can find out who the hell the guy is or why he might be involved.

“Look,” Michael tells him as he hooks his sword onto his belt, “we’ll get the guy.”

Ray grimaces a little. He knows they will. But he wants to get there first.

Even the people who gave Geoff the contract Ray was on are surprised. They kept acting surprised even when Geoff showed up with Michael and threatened to extract one bone from each of them for every time the skull mask guy had taken a swing at Ray. So they’re either great actors, or they were actually surprised.

It takes two weeks of Ray sulking around the empty warehouse and playing solitary card games before Gavin finally gets his ear to the ground in the right places.

The Dead Eels haven’t been disappearing for no reason.

They’ve been getting picked off.

Some mysterious guy in a skull mask has been pulling their gang apart at the seams on somebody’s hire. What Gavin hears about is the kind of bounty by the Eels that would send even the Hatters, the Eels’ sworn enemies, into a debate on whether to hunt him down. Some of the Eels are saying that he has supernatural powers - that he can become shadow or kill a dozen men with a wave of his hand. Some of the more reliable survivors say that he walked into a building full of Eel members with a pistol and a sword, killed all eleven of them, and walked out bloody but unharmed.

All of that because he’s been hired by someone.

Apparently he calls himself the Vagabond.

“Sounds fucking dramatic enough,” Geoff offers.

Ray taps his fingers against his thigh. He’s been practicing with Michael on sword fighting once his ankle was stable. Just in case. “Okay. So I’m going to kill him.” It’s not phrased like a question. Ray is a sniper, and a pickpocket, and absolutely believes in the sheer power of revenge anyway. He’ll shoot this guy down from on top of a building if it means getting revenge. Because sure, he believes in the idea, but he’s never been there to play fair.

There’s a pause. The wheels in Geoff’s head are visibly turning. “So this Vagabond is a loyalty to the highest bidder kind of guy.”

“Seems like it,” Gavin nods.

“And we’re doing pretty good on the coin side of things.”

Jack shrugs. “We’re doing alright.” It’s an understatement, a humble one, which is so certifiably Jack in nature.

Ray jumps about three steps ahead and sees right where Geoff is heading. “Geoff. You aren’t seriously thinking about hiring the guy who just tried to murder me, uh, two weeks ago, right?”

“Well, we’ve got to figure out if he was killing you for a job, or because he felt like it. If it was the second one? Fuck no, we’re not firing him. I’ll kill him myself at that point. But if it was the first one. It would be easier to pull off some of our bigger heist ideas with a sixth guy. What do you think has been holding us back from the Golden Cat? And obviously he’s good at what he does. Almost managed to catch you off-guard.”

“Geoff,” Ray says with some extra feeling, “he tried to fucking _murder me_.”

“Ray,” Geoff responds with the same amount of venom, “can you really judge him on that one.”

Well, shit. Game lost on that front.

\---

Three days later, Ray swings back into the slaughterhouse after a morning spent just walking around the city, checking up on contacts after his two week hiatus from doing his actual job, and sees his attempted murderer about fifteen feet ahead of him. He freezes. Everyone’s gone except for the two men in front of him, and the tension is thick in the air.

“So,” Geoff says, leaning back on one of the stools to rest his back against the table, “If we cut the money from this heist six ways, you’d be willing to join.”

“I don’t see why not,” the man says. He’s got a surprisingly smooth voice for a guy who looks like he could punch a hound clear across a canal in one hit. “The way I hear it, the Fakes haven’t failed a heist yet.” It is seriously not the voice he was expecting. Ray edges a little closer and forces himself to focus. Focus in, don’t zone out.

Ray inhales. “Are you serious,” he says to both of them. But mostly Geoff. “No fucking warning.”

“Ryan,” Geoff says, “this is Ray. Apparently you’ve met.”

“We have,” _Ryan_ says dryly. He finally stands, and Ray remembers just how tall this guy is. So Ray makes sure to stand as straight as humanly possible. By the time he decides to focus again, Ryan is holding out a hand. Because handshakes are just how it goes, apparently. “Sorry about the rooftop. Valencia hired me to make sure no one tried to kill her. It was a -.”

“We’re not friends,” Ray says calmly, rocking back on his heels. He shoves his hands into his pockets just to emphasize the point. “I threw myself off a roof because of you. Shit hurt.” This is petty. But so is Ray himself.

“Which was smart, by the way. Surprised me.”

“Shove it up your ass.”

“Ray,” Geoff interjects wearily. “We’re probably hiring Haywood for the next heist, so if you could at least pretend to get along for the next week, I’d really appreciate it. And so would everyone else. Kiss and make up already. It’s not like everyone in the crew hasn’t tried to kill at least one other member before.”

“Geoff, everyone’s tried to kill _Gavin_ at least once, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.”

Ryan steamrolls over the whole conversation like it isn’t even happening. “It’s alright. We’ll talk it out like adults at some point, I’m sure.” There’s hints of laughter scattered all throughout his tone. Ray just sort of wants to reach over and punch Ryan in the face, or otherwise make him stop talking. Because he feels like he’s talking to someone who’s already maybe three steps ahead of him. Hopefully that’s just how he sounds and not how it actually is.

“How’d you get onto that roof without me hearing you.” He keeps his tone flat. It’s only a question because of the words themselves. No tonal evidence to dig up.

“I’m very quiet,” Ryan Haywood responds just as evenly, and alright, Ray definitely hates him, upcoming heist or no.

\---

They’re sent together to collect some dues from the remaining Hatters that are barely clinging onto Drapers Ward. Ray sulks the entire way as they make their way over rooftops. Ryan is able to keep pace with him pretty easily. That pisses Ray off, since he was hoping his way out would be to just outpace Ryan to begin with. But it seems the jack of all trades is in fact a master of all trades as well.

They drop down into an alley, and two Overseers turn the corner.

“Shit,” Ray says, and in the time it takes for him to pull out his sword, Ryan’s already thrown a knife. One of the Overseers crumples instantly. The other one lets out a shout and charges, and Ray’s right there a few seconds before Ryan can pull out his own sword. He skewers the other Overseer and drags the blade upwards a few inches. Guts him like it’s nothing.

Intestines flop out onto the concrete as the man staggers, totters, and falls.

Ryan turns to look at him. “Still don’t trust me?” He sounds like he’s having fun with the concept.

Ray gives him his best simpering smile. He raises his pistol at Ryan, then over Ryan’s shoulder, and shoots the Overseer trying to quietly approach Ryan’s back in the head. “No,” he says simply, and steps around Ryan like he isn’t even there. He can feel Ryan’s eyes following him as he moves towards the back of the alley where it leads into the maze of Dunwall’s seedy underbelly.

They are silent for a few moments. Their footsteps echo all around. Ray keeps his eyes fixed on rooftops and corners where someone might be waiting to jump them. Just when he thinks that they might be able to make the whole journey in silence, Ryan proves him wrong.

“You normally eviscerate people that fast?” Ryan asks, casual as anything, as Ray leads him down a side alley.

Ray winces to himself. He thinks about the words _heretic_ and _witch_ and his mother screaming as an Overseer grabbed her by the hair and dragged her towards the door. This may not be the same Abbey, in many ways. But they wear the same masks and want the same things. “No.” That is the only answer he can manage. He knew what burning flesh smelled like before the rat plague because of the Abbey. He knew what it was like to run.

“Got something against the Abbey, then.” Ryan is too good at that - at seeing to the heart of things, and parsing together all the words Ray isn’t saying.

“Who doesn’t,” Ray says tonelessly. “We’re not friends, alright? You haven’t earned the right to my hugely tragic backstory or anything. Like, I know I need one of those to live here, but I don’t go around advertising that shit.”

“Maybe you should. One hell of a way to earn some easy money, in the right places.”

“Oh, definitely. _Skinny twenty-year-old Karnaca native here to tell you about how sad his life is for twenty coin per hour_. People’ll jump all over that. I’ll leave the criminal life behind forever with that kind of income. Geoff’ll have to hire a new sniper and everything.”

Ryan laughs brightly. It does not fit anything else about him - the skull mask or the flawless ability to kill. It even sounds warm.

Ray watches from the corner of his eye as Ryan rummages in his coat pocket with gloved hands and neatly unfolds the piece of paper Geoff handed them this morning with the names and amounts. Most of it’s Geoff’s abysmal handwriting, but there’s Jack’s neat print above some of the really illegible words.

Collecting dues is usually something he and Michael do. Ray holds all the coin and covers exits while Michael looks intimidating and punches walls and shit. Unfortunately, Ryan occupies the same end of the terrifying spectrum that Michael does, but maybe a different axis. Ray learns that on the fourth person they visit.

“I’m not paying you shit,” growls the former Hatter, grabbing for what’s probably a sword just out of sight against the wall.

Ryan gives this perfect long-suffering sigh and grabs the guy by the throat. He lifts him up a few inches off the ground and slams him into the wall like he doesn’t weigh a thing. Ray stares. He keeps himself back.

“And we’re not a charity,” Ryan says calmly. “So you’re going to get the coin and you’re going to give it to my friend here, and that means we leave you alone with all of your fingers attached. You do something I don’t like here, and I’ll take whatever fingers I think you like the most until you give up what we want.”

It’s definitely not like Michael. Michael yells and punches through walls and will actually stab people right after asking for their dues. It’s awesome.

Ryan is deliberate. Ryan does not inflict violence. He lets the concept of the violence he could inflict get the job done for him. Were Ray in a more charitable mood, he might even admit that it’s kind of masterful. But as things stand now, Ray decides that it is nothing but the laziest and most manipulative shit he’s ever seen. Dredged straight up from the Void itself and spat out onto the Drapers Ward.

The Hatter makes a deflated squeaking noise and manages to force out _I’ll get_ , which is a great simple sentence, subject and verb. Ray and Ryan stand there in utter silence together until the Hatter returns thirty seconds later with coins shoved into a purse.

“Thank you very much,” Ryan says cheerfully, like he came by to ask for some sugar from his neighbor or something, and closes the door for the man as they leave. It is the creepiest thing in the world, hands down.

Collections go off without a hitch, though, which is even worse. Because the fact is that Ryan is funny in between scaring people half to death - funny in a way that seems perfect to bounce off of Ray. They’re on some miserable third floor in the middle of the Drapers Ward and Ryan makes this comment, almost lost behind the material of his mask, that _if we just kill these idiots now, all the coin’s ours anyway, so what’s the point, existentially speaking_ -.

Ray lets out a snort of laughter.

The skull mask tilts over at him. “That wasn’t funny,” Ray says to it blankly. He takes the stairs back down two at a time. If they weren’t, you know, sworn mortal enemies according to Ray himself, they might even be friends.

He’s fucking all this up in a way that makes Gavin look competent.


	3. the scene of your great unbecoming collapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now the real shit starts. Sorry, Ray.

“My life’s going to absolute shit,” Ray tells Michael over breakfast.

It’s just them and Gavin on this typically cloudy morning. The three other guys are out doing old man things, probably. Sizing walkers and trying on spectacles and whatever old people do to prepare for the inevitable march to the grave. Ray stabs at a piece of fish on his plate with some viciousness behind it. Michael raises an eyebrow and stirs more sugar into his coffee. _Go on_ is the obvious prompt there.

Ray picks up a glass of water. “Ryan Haywood,” he says darkly, “is a shitstain and Geoff loves it. Hell, _Gavin_ loves it.”

“He’s okay,” Michael says flatly. “I don’t get what your problem is And Gavin’s a piece of shit anyway, so he would love it..”

“I just get a bad feeling from him.”

Michael tilts his head a little. And there’s that weird flash of insight Michael gets sometimes, just a single fully accurate statement. “You know Ryan’s definitely not a former Overseer, right? We checked him out.” And even that statement makes Ray almost flinch a little. He stabs at another piece of fish even more angrily and chews to avoid talking. Because yeah, that might be part of it. The skull mask looks like an Overseer’s mask. Like the shadow of one, or the worst reflection of one, and that irks Ray. To borrow a word from Ryan. Because sure, Ryan’s not an Overseer, but some of the mannerisms remind him of them.

His religious devotion. To murder and mayhem, sure, but it still borders on religious. A rigid belief system. In what, Ray has no idea, but there’s something there. An ability to hurt and kill that could probably outdo the Abbey of the Everyman.

Ray taps his fingers on the table. “I know.”

He knows it factually. But his gut is still screaming at him about the inherent wrongness in everything Haywood does. And that’s why he hates how much everyone else likes it. Why is he the only one who sees this? Why does everyone except for Michael and possibly Jack, just a little, implicitly trust this guy? He’s done nothing to prove it. And maybe they don’t trust him, maybe that’s Ray making assumptions, but they _like_ him on some level.

Gavin’s even begun acting like himself around Ryan, asking stupid questions. Ryan answers them with the annoyed affection of an older brother, explaining concepts that are way above the average bloodthirsty mercenary’s background knowledge. That only encourages Gavin. And it doesn’t fit. That’s part of what he hates. There are all these pieces of the man that is Ryan Haywood - skull mask, weird random knowledge, experience with knives - and none of them add up to a real and understandable person.

None of them have even seen his face.

Michael swallows. “Look, Ray, I’m pretty sure he’s the type to up and leave the second the heist is over. So you’ve got, what - another week and a half with the guy? Just dig in and deal. We’ll get through it. The heist’ll go fine. Hopefully.” It is the closest that Michael gets to optimism. Just deal with it. Handle it. Keep handling it. Eventually the storm shall pass. It would be something Ray would appreciate a lot more if he wasn’t so miserable about it.

“Well, we’re fucking bringing Gavin in the first place,” Ray mutters. “It’s not going to go fine. It’s a universal law that it won’t work out, because we brought the idiot.”

Gavin squawks out a protest as he rounds the corner, as if he’s somehow _surprised_ Ray has approximately zero faith in him. Michael gets Gavin into the friendliest armlock in the world and Ray laughs a little. It’s fine. It’s all fine. He looks past the two towards where his crossbow hangs on the wall. The metal glitters in the morning light. It doesn’t matter what Ryan Haywood’s done. It matters what he does right now, and as long as he doesn’t screw them over, it’ll work out.

“Hey, earth to Ray,” Michael says. Ray glances back at him. “Me and Gavin are going to head out and see if we can scavenge up some of the shit Jack wanted for the heist. Want to tag along?”

Ray shoves his hands into his pockets. “Why not,” he says blankly.

“X-Ray!” Gavin yelps and comes in for a hug, so Ray weaves back around the table to avoid it and watches as Gavin stubs his toe on the table leg.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Michael confers as Gavin hops around for a minute.

Ray exhales. They are good at what they do. The Fakes are professionals in their own very non-professional way.

The heist is going to go perfectly.

\---

So the heist goes bad.

Thinking back, it was a bad idea in the first place to rob the Golden Cat, but it would’ve been one hell of a gesture. Multiple floors, off-duty Watch members moving in and out. Proving that nowhere is safe from the Fakes. It was a stupid idea. But here Ryan and Ray were, sequestered in the madam’s office as Gavin and Geoff distracted her a few floors below. Michael was getting mines set up in a building across the street to distract the City Watch, and Jack was waiting in the waterway nearby.

“What’s the fucking combination,” Ray hisses, his ear pressed to the safe as he begins turning the frankly massive dials again. “This is taking too long.”

Ryan looks at him, skull mask with that same grin, over a book. “Try one-three-nine,” he says idly.

“What?”

“One-three-nine. Try it.”

Ray spins the dials. Something clicks and he yanks hard on the safe’s handle. It swings open with a low groan. “Shit. How did you know that?”

Ryan tosses the book he’s holding onto the madam’s desk, sending some papers fluttering to the ground.  “Try reading a book every once in a while. It helps.” The smirk is audible.

Ray opens his mouth to respond, because - Outsider’s fucking eyes, he _hates_ Ryan Haywood’s smug tone and that stupid overdramatic mask and every single thing he does. He sort of wants to tell him to fuck off, and reaches into the safe to yank out the first shining gold ingot he sees. But then Ryan freezes. It’s an unnatural look on him. His head tilts downwards towards the floor.

Ray looks down. There’s the floor, same floor that’s been there for the past fifteen minutes.

“Ray,” Ryan enunciates, “get whatever’s in the fucking safe right now and get out.”

“Why?”

Ryan’s head is moving. He’s definitely following something on the floor, but there’s nothing there, and that’s really starting to piss Ray off.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Ray demands, even as he shoves more gold ingots into the bag that he has slung over one shoulder.

“There’s three guards coming up the stairs way too fast to be normal. I think Gavin might’ve fucked up.”

“How do you _know_ that?”

Ryan turns to look at him. His eyes are bright behind the mask. Ray finds himself staring back as much as he wants to rip his gaze away. “Trust me. Get out the window. Get on the rooftops. I’ll meet you at the river.”

Ray tries to open his mouth, and then Ryan grabs him by the back of his jacket and pretty much throws him towards the window. Ray only manages to keep from breaking his lower jaw on the windowsill by reflex alone. He hoists himself up. Ryan’s facing the door. His sword is abruptly in his hand. And Ray doesn’t trust him, not at all, but Ray trusts his own ability to survive. He pushes himself out of the window and reaches over to shimmy up the pipe leading to the roof of the Cat.

In the twelve minutes it takes for Ray to navigate from the Golden Cat’s roof to an adjacent roof, closer to the rendezvous point, chaos has engulfed the Distillery District. Ray peers over the side of the building he’s crouched on.

Ryan’s down on the street. It’s easy to spot the mask among everyone else. There’s City Watch swarming, and Gavin’s sprinting down a side alley.

Ray hears the shout. Sees a City Watch officer point right at Ryan, and Ryan just fucking _stands_ there.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Ray hisses down at the figure who definitely cannot hear him. They’re yelling at Ryan more, pulling out swords, and Ryan is just there with his arms loose at his sides. Ray glances back towards the river. He glances downwards towards the street. It takes him a second, but he slides down from the roof onto a cooling unit with a quiet thump.

He hates Ryan Haywood, definitely, but he doesn’t want to see him fucking die like this.

Everyone else is distracted. Ray drops to the ground in the side alley, peering around the corner. Ryan’s taken a few steps back, his sword dangling loosely from his fingers. One of the City Watch is moving forward faster than Ryan is moving backwards, sword pointed right at him.

Ray swears and turns the corner, aiming his pistol.

Ryan _moves_ . It’s fast enough where Ray’s finger twitches on the pistol’s trigger before his brain can understand what the fuck is happening. Ryan’s left hand curls into a tight fist at his side. His sword flicks forward elegantly, like it’s an afterthought, and slits the guard’s throat in the middle of a sentence. The other three guards stagger. One of them runs into the other, and it takes Ray a couple seconds to realize that their throats are _all_ cut. Blood is everywhere.

Four men all fall to the ground with the same wound, a ruby line weeping across their necks.

Ray stares at Ryan’s back blankly until the man sheathes his sword neatly and turns around.

The two of them stare at each other. The blue of Ryan’s eyes is the darkest thing Ray’s seen in his whole life.

“I thought I told you to get to Jack,” Ryan says.

Ray remembers a day in Karnaca.

He remembers an altar, and strips of purple and black cloth rippling in a rush of air that should not exist. He remembers bone. Ryan’s coat billows slightly around his knees. There is no wind. Ray wants to keep watching. Ray wants to tear his gaze away once and for all and never see this again. He can imagine the way Ryan must be smiling behind that fucking mask.

The building across the street erupts in smoke and fire. The ground shakes and Ryan’s attention shifts for a fraction of a second.

Ray inhales. He turns. He runs.

\---

He has to get to Jack first, and has to hope the rest of the crew gets there first. And then they can leave Ryan fucking Haywood here in the Distillery District, get back to the slaughterhouse, pack everything up, and - do what? Go where?

Anywhere. Anywhere but here. Men like Ryan, who do things that shouldn’t happen, they’re like the tide or even the rat plague. You don’t fight them. You run or you die. He knew men like that in Karnaca - the Overseers, for an obvious example, or some of the criminals there who controlled entire districts with a flick of their wrist.

A hand wraps around the back of his collar, pulling him backwards. For a moment Ray slips between the here-and-now and five years ago, escaping from an Overseer in Karnaca with his life on the line. He swings around, fabric ripping, and slams his knee upwards into Ryan Haywood’s gut. Ryan lets out a wheeze of surprise, and Ray practically rips the mask off of him, digging nails into skin and flesh, before he can even think about what he’s doing.

He’s just thinking of the Overseer, even though Ryan is more dangerous by far.

Both of them freeze as the mask hits the ground.

“Well,” Ryan says, and Ray is pretty sure he’s about to fucking die. He also feels like he’s supposed to say something at this point, but his jaw works up and down and nothing much comes out. Ryan’s definitely smiling at him, sandy hair messy and swept back. He looks good. He’s got a day or two’s worth of stubble. There’s some dark paint or something around his eyes, smeared by sweat and time. “Like what you see?”

“Fuck off,” Ray finally says, his pistol leaping to his hand. The barrel points securely at Ryan’s gut. It’s not a deadly shot. But it’s a painful one. It’s one meant to cause suffering. “Don’t come near me.” He takes another step further down the alley behind him.

Ryan raises a very pretty eyebrow. His face is actually frustrating to look at. “I thought you said you didn’t believe in the Abbey, Ray. Even if you’re from Serkonos.”

“I don’t believe in the Abbey. But I think there are things you don’t fuck around with. And whatever you did back there - that’s one of them.”

“Come on, Ray. Don’t get superstitious on me.”

“I saw what I saw.” Ray is not going to let Ryan wave this one off with a smile and a laugh. “So you tell me what happened.”

Ryan sighs. Then he laughs softly to himself, which is worse. “Well, you already got the mask off.” He reaches for his left glove. Ray watches as Ryan tugs the leather glove off and lifts up his hand. There, in dark ink like Geoff’s own tattoos, that familiar symbol - on the pieces of bone at that shrine in Karnaca, and here too. The Outsider’s mark. “Happy?” he asks, beginning to pull the glove back on.

“No,” Ray says. He does the only thing he can think of at this point, with the pistol heavy and sure and real in his hand. He pulls back on the trigger.

The gun goes off. He sees Ryan’s features twist into something almost disappointed. The mark on the back of his hand flares up bright yellow before there’s a rush of air and Ryan’s gone. And the bullet, too, is just - gone. It doesn’t impact anywhere. Ray blinks, searching for the bullet in the wall, trying to comprehend what happened, when an arm wraps around his throat.

It’s a black sleeve, the familiar black of everything Ryan wears. Ray starts to struggle, kicking back, slamming his foot back hard into Ryan’s knee. This only results in him getting lifted up a good inch off the ground. He flails harder even as a hand clamps over his mouth and nose, preventing him from trying to inhale.

“Calm down,” Ryan says with utter calm. “I’m not going to kill you.”

Ray’s final thought before passing out is that those are the words of a man who is absolutely planning to kill him.


	4. a new religion that never quite got off the ground

He wakes up in the slaughterhouse.

Jack’s sitting next to him with a book open. The light is low and the same blue of whale oil. Ray does not wake up slowly. He goes from sleep to wakefulness in about a half a second, and accompanies this by sitting straight up. The blanket falls off of him. Jack actually drops his book out of surprise. “Ray - fuck, I’m glad you’re up. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” Ray interrupts. He’s trying to remember what happened, cycling through his thoughts up until the last thing he can remember. A massive headache isn’t helping. “What happened?”

“Ryan brought you and the goods to the boat. Michael detonating his explosives knocked you out, apparently. Geoff and Gavin are out figuring out who they want to sell the ingots to, so they’re out getting offers right now, and Michael’s picking up some food.”

“Ryan,” Ray croaks.

He remembers all at once. The force of it sends blood racing to every inch of his body. His fingers twitch uselessly at his sides. Fucking _Ryan_. He swings his legs off of the cot he’s on and the world sways from one side to the other. But he forces himself to stand anyway. Why is Ryan lying for him? What the hell’s happening any more? Ray presses a hand to his throat. Sore. From being choked out.

“Where is he?” He assumes Jack’ll know who that pronoun means.

“On the roof. You should -.”

“I’m fine, Jack.”

Jack pauses. “Okay.” His tone betrays how much he doubts that statement, but he seems willing to let it go.

Ray manages to climb up onto the roof after a minute of figuring out how his hands work again. But once he’s up there, it’s easy enough to spot Ryan sitting on the edge of the roof. A cigar is balanced in between his fingers. The mask is even off, which says a lot about how comfortable he is.

“So are you going to fucking explain yourself?” Ray demands from the other side of the roof. That’s about the distance he feels safe talking to Ryan at.

“I don’t know why you think I owe you an explanation.” Ryan reaches into his pockets. Ray tenses as he rummages. “Want your bullet back?”

“My what?”

In the moonlight, Ryan holds up the familiar cylindrical shape of a bullet. It’s one of Ray’s. “From when you tried to shoot me earlier. I figured it’d be rude to keep it without asking.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Ray says, exasperated enough where he can’t maintain his usual deadpan, “are you doing?”

“Being polite. You going to come over here and sit down or what?”

Ray pauses and considers before just slouching a little more right where he is at the corner of the building. “I’m staying right here. And you can keep the bullet. I don’t need it.”

Ryan shrugs and tucks the round back into his coat. “No canal along that side if you’re planning to throw yourself off.”

“Fuck you.”

It occurs to him about three seconds later that Ryan actually sounds tired. Ryan carried him through half of the Distillery District, apparently, and it’s late on the same night. Were Ray a better person, he might feel bad. Instead, he keeps himself still and glances around. The area’s quiet this late at night. It’s not a residential area - everyone around here goes home to families and loved ones past seven. The busiest place here is a bar a few blocks over.

So it’s just them, alone on this night in Dunwall.

Ryan finally swings his legs up and pushes himself upwards. The paint’s gone from around his eyes. “How about a question for a question?”

It’s a bad idea. But knowing how this has gone before, it’s the only way to pry any information from Ryan’s cold (and marked) strangler’s hands. “I ask first. How’d you get the mark?”

“What, not going to ask what it does first?”

“No. Saw enough.”

“Fine.” Ryan runs a hand through his hair, brushing some of it back. “I was picked out to be an Overseer when I was a kid - a few years older than most. Eight or nine. I wasn’t the type that volunteered for it. But I got picked anyway, and the day that the Overseers showed up to take me away, I grabbed my father’s pistol, killed two of them, and ran.”

“Well. Shit.”

“To put it lightly.” Ryan’s hands wind behind his back. “He - the Outsider - showed up later that day. The mark was the only reason I didn’t die after that, and during the rat plague. And that’s all there is, Ray.”

“So what was that? During the heist?”

“It’s a thing I can do.”

“Yeah. I got that. Explain.”

“Ah.” Ryan smiles softly. “Unfortunately, it's my turn to ask a question, as per our deal. You tell me: what’s going on with you and the Abbey of the Everyman?”

Ray freezes. It’s something he’s only told a few people - Michael and Jack, really. He told Geoff enough to get hired on. Michael was the only one he knew before meeting the rest of the crew, so there’s history there. And Jack is the kind of guy you can tell just about anything and he’ll keep that secret close to his heart if you ask him to. It’s the reason Jack sometimes goes with Geoff to negotiations - like his brain is some repository of knowledge that Geoff might forget.

Ryan can keep secrets. That much is obvious.

He looks down at his feet. When he looks back up, Ryan’s moved a step or two closer. There is this bleeding heart sincerity on his face, and Ray really wishes he had the mask on so he wouldn’t have to look at the raw concern staring him down.

He’s not even sure if it’s honest. But something’s there anyway.

Finally, Ray exhales softly. “I’m from Karnaca,” he says slowly. “Abbey’s big there. Sometimes they get the wrong people. Sometimes they make assumptions that anything’s a witch at work. Sometimes they’re after people like you, but they’re too stupid to realize that what they’re looking for is pretty obvious. So they go looking everywhere. Chunk of an old building falls and kills someone, so it must be black magic. Not gravity. And I don’t like that. I think you should just let people live their lives.”

“So the Abbey took someone you cared about.”

“Look, man, pull whatever you want from that.”

“I’m good at subtext.” There’s that shit-eating grin again. Ray folds his arms and keeps his gaze fixed on some indeterminate point behind Ryan. The horizon. Anywhere else. “But I won’t press the issue either.” Some tension leaks out of Ray’s shoulders despite his own efforts. He’s his own worst enemy.

Ray swallows. “Why’d you go from being paid to do whatever to saving my life and not taking all those ingots.” He didn’t think about it at the time - but there was no real reason for Ryan to do what he did. He could’ve left Ray there. He could’ve taken the gold. But he got Ray back to the crew, and got the goods to the crew - leading to coin that would be split six ways.

Ryan shrugged. “I like you guys.”

“Oh,” Ray says. “Okay.” He was expecting practically any other answer from the Vagabond of all people.

“You couldn’t tell?” Now Ryan is sounding confused. “I mean, I like you, Ray.”

Ray’s jaw is moving and word-like sounds are coming out. “Don’t make this weird.” His brain is thankfully doing the talking without his input after that huge earth-shattering revelation.

Ryan gives him a look. It’s the _you’re the one making this weird_ look.

Ray makes sure to go ahead and respond. “Also don’t do that thing with your face.”

“What? Skepticism?”

Ray waves a hand at Ryan’s whole face in general. It’s a vague motion that reminds him just how tall Ryan is. He has to reach up way more than should ever be legal. “No - just. The whole thing. All of it.”

Ryan stares at him. “I can put the mask back on if that helps.”

“That’s even creepier. Is it supposed to kind of look like an Overseer’s mask, by the way?”

That makes Ryan smile. For some reason. As if the question is some kind of compliment. “A little. I thought it was funny.”

“Hilarious. You’re a true master of comedy.”

“I like to think so.”

Ray rubs the back of his head a little. He doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t even know how to feel. There is a numbness inside of him, cold and growing with every second he spends on this freezing roof. “Look - Ryan. I’m going to get some sleep, okay? I don’t have time to care what you’re doing. Or if you’ve got ulterior motives. But if you betray anyone in the crew, I’ll make sure I’m the one who comes after you. So if that’s the plan, tonight would be a good time to disappear.”

Ryan smiles at him widely. “Wouldn’t expect anything else.” Ray’s foot shifts a little towards the best path down to the ground. “Wait.” Ryan’s rummaging in his coat pockets. “Catch,” he says, and an object makes a perfect arc towards him. Ray easily reaches up and catches it. Something scratches along his palm.

A strange thing of bone and metal sits in his hand. He stares down at it. “What the hell’s this?” There are symbols carved on it.

“Good luck charm,” Ryan says, his voice muffled slightly as he turns back to sit on the edge of the roof.

“I don’t want it.”

“Ray.” The first hint of danger saunters into Ryan’s tone. “This is not a negotiation. Take it, okay? Even if it doesn’t do anything, it would personally make me feel better.”

Ray stares at the back of Ryan’s head. “Is it _supposed_ to be doing something? Like, does this let you track me so you can stop being suspicious and evil whenever I’m within a hundred feet?”

“No,” Ryan says. And he sounds truly tired this time. “I saved your life back up in the Golden Cat, and this is how you get to repay me. Just. Keep it in a pocket. You don’t need to do anything. Bring it with you. It would make me personally feel better.” Ray turns the thing over in his hands. It’s small, relatively speaking - barely bigger than his palm. There’s something vaguely familiar about it, which probably means it’s the kind of item the Abbey would be interested. And some stupid teenage rebellion about four years late forces Ray to close his fist around it and tuck it into his pocket.

The Abbey can go to the Void. Ryan didn’t have to save his life, but he did. Ray’s spent his life rejecting the rest of the Abbey’s teachings. He can get over this last piece of the puzzle.

So he slides it into his pocket. Ryan beams at him. And when Ray slips off the roof, he barely even feels the impact of his feet on the cobblestones.

\---

Life goes on in its usual quick and vicious way.

It takes a few weeks, but sooner rather than later, Ray finds himself sometimes slipping his hand into his pocket just to touch the strange thing Ryan handed him. It becomes a reassuring weight. He tries to do it when Ryan isn’t around, of course. Because he’s done enough. He’s kept Ryan’s secret, and he’s going to keep doing so. They don’t owe each other anything more than that.

But he can’t always avoid it.

Everyone seemed surprised that Ryan didn’t up and disappear the second that the coin was divided up between everyone. Even Ryan himself seemed a little appalled at his own behavior. But he’s been getting along with the rest of the crew. Him and Michael are good at chaos, loud and explosive. Gavin and Ryan argue and banter, but they’re both obviously smart people. Geoff, Jack, and Ryan definitely seem to share a lot of the same experiences, a bone-deep understanding of the same era - the rat plague, the way Dunwall’s changed underneath Emily Kaldwin.

On the anniversary of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin’s assassination, Ray slips out from the side room he was napping in to see the three men gathered around the main table, pouring whiskey into three different shot glasses. Ray keeps himself pressed against the doorway - trying to make it seem like he isn’t there, or if he is, he’s too tired to listen.

“To untimely deaths,” Jack says. He sounds so much older than he seems. The plague took years off of the lives of everyone who made it through.

Geoff pauses. He snorts. “Alright. To one more royal family member dead before her time.”

The two of them look over at Ryan. Ray’s watching Ryan too, slipping halfway back behind the doorway just in case. The man tilts the glass slightly in his gloved hand. “To a life significantly less complicated.”

That makes the other two chuckle. They clink their glasses together and toss back their whiskey. Geoff and Jack are thinking of the rat plague. Ray knows that Ryan’s thinking about something else. And he sees Ryan’s head move to glance towards him, like he knows somehow, and Ray presses himself back behind the wall. Him and Ryan have improved relations, in a weird and uncomfortable way, but he feels like this moment isn’t for him. Ray is many things - abrasive, deadpan, all of it. Yet he understands the nuance of when to shut the hell up and stay out of sight.

Put another way: this moment was not for him.

A lot of Ryan’s other moments, though, do seem to be for him. It started slowly - Ray cracking a few deadpan lines for his own benefit that the crew usually misses, but Ryan catching on and chuckling a little.

They start regularly going out to collect dues. Geoff is a fan of their efficiency, apparently, and it gives Geoff and Michael good reason to go around as the man with the offer and the accompanying muscle to get some more deals.

Now there’s a schedule and a way of things. Every Tuesday, Ray gets up and grabs an apple or some other snack and straps himself up with a sword and a pistol. Ryan is already up most days. In fact, Ray’s not sure when Ryan actually sleeps. But Ryan is sitting there, cleaning off a terrifying knife or something, and gives Ray this huge shit-eating grin.

After all, the real proof of how comfortable Ryan Haywood has gotten is in the way that he willingly takes off his mask and relaxes.

But either way, they head out towards whatever district they need to. The first few times it was quiet. The first few times they did everything normally, Ray lurking around bored and a little nervous behind Ryan as the man in the skull mask did the heavy lifting.

Then by week three, active banter.

Then by week five, Ryan starts showing off a little - disappears from one point and reappears up high to help Ray up onto a rooftop that offers a shortcut. They steal from rich homes along the way, Ryan offering tactical advice with that strange sight of his. _Housekeeper’s downstairs, family’s out, third floor, let’s go_. And Ray - well, Ray begins to bounce off of Ryan’s charm and friendliness. He used to bounce off of Michael’s aggression with some polite jabs and a little bit of tender mercy, but with Ryan, it’s even easier.

It’s just unfiltered emotionless spite, which is something Ray usually filters down to be deadpan. A little more of a joke, a little less of a true threat, a little bit of something palatable - because that’s what the Fakes do in many regards. But when it’s just them - Ray and Ryan, Ryan and Ray - it’s easy. There’s nothing to downplay.

With Michael, it went like this. Michael would punch a wall and scream and tell them to _get the fucking money, get the fucking money right now or I bust your skull in, swear by the damn Void_ -. And Ray, with a flat expression, would point out that he has personally seen Michael bust in someone’s skull before, and it was messy as hell. Blood on wallpaper. Pieces of brain everywhere. It would be a bad show. A bad time.

With Ryan, it’s different. Ryan is a storm approaching the line into becoming a hurricane. He knocks where Michael might kick the door. He asks. He asks again. He almost always has to ask a third time, and then the knife comes out. The point presses against the person’s gut. And if Ryan doesn’t like the answer, he sets his hand on the person’s shoulder and applies pressure. “Ray,” he usually says, a smile somewhere in his voice, “Ray, you ever seen what color someone’s intestines are?” Or something similar - _you know if you slit someone’s neck in the right way they can still breathe, just a little, as they bleed out_ , or _heard what it sounds like as a lung collapses_.

And Ray’s busy with something else, usually - fixing the way his sword hangs on his belt, or fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket. “Can’t say I have, Ry.”

Ryan’s breathing softens slightly. Sometimes he digs the knife in just a little, and everyone can see the bright red dot blooming on the debtor’s shirt or dripping down from his neck. “Want to see?” he asks, and that’s the most classically _Ryan_ question Ray ever hears. Like a fucking dog that wants to be let off its leash, the edge of a snarl ticking frantically at its jaw.

Ray always offers some kind of rebuttal. “Those boots you’re wearing are new,” Ray’ll point out. The boots are never new. Or: “Collapsing lung’ll take a little while. You think we’ve got that kind of time?” They absolutely do.

And Ryan hums a little, contemplative, and says something like _maybe, maybe we do, I can make time_. The person, ninety-nine percent of the time, ducks off to go grab the coin.

The other one percent is this one time, week eight - not that Ray’s been keeping track or anything, obviously - where the man who owes them makes a frantic grab for something hidden behind the doorframe. It’s like it’s in slow motion. The eyes flicker left, and the hand moves. Ray yanks a knife out of Ryan’s belt before he can think and throws, puts his whole arm and shoulder into it, and beats out Ryan’s lunge to jam the knife through the sternum.

Ray’s - Ryan’s, really, but Ray did the work here - knife hits the center of the torso with a thunk and the man stumbles back, fingers releasing a cheap pistol.

“That’s my knife,” Ryan mutters, a little slow on the uptake for once. He glances over at Ray. Ray looks back, a smile twitching at his lips for once. Then Ryan pauses.

He laughs. It’s a warm one, one that borders on the word _fond_. “I didn’t give you permission to do that,” he says.

“I saved your ass,” Ray points out, pushing the dead body’s leg out of their path. “Come on. Let’s go steal all of his shit.”

“Honestly, Ray,” Ryan says, a few feet behind him, “I could kiss you.”

“Trust me, I hear that all the time.” He doesn’t. It’s his mouth scrambling to find something to input that isn’t a yelp of confused terror. The word _kiss_ shouldn’t legally be allowed to leave Ryan Haywood’s mouth, especially with that same slaughterhouse rooftop earnestness behind it. That has to be against all kinds of laws. It’s against Ray’s personal creed, if nothing else, which is the only law Ray’s ever followed.

Ryan yanks his knife back out of the corpse and wipes it off on his pants.

On their way back to the slaughterhouse later that night, Ryan asks, “You ready for the heist?”

“Yeah,” Ray says. It’s not a lie. He’s ready for that. He’s not ready for a single other fucking thing, especially the color of Ryan’s eyes are behind that damned mask.


	5. know how we hold it down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took months longer than it should've, but college really did kick my ass over this year. This has been half-written for months, and I finally sat down this week and pulled it the hell together. The boys are back and they're being idiots again.

Someone’s started following him.

Ray catches sight of him every so often in crowds or on distant street corners, staring him down - a man maybe Ray’s age, maybe a little younger, dressed in casually worn clothes, dark hair almost wet and matted down against his scalp. He has a slightly sallow look, a strangely haggard weight, as if he’s halfway to a corpse being yanked out of the sea. That’s not the strange part. Lots of people in Dunwall look like they climbed out of the garbage and went to work.

The strange part is his eyes.

They’re entirely black, through and through. No pupils. No whites to the eyes. Nothing. They look empty. They look like a void, like the night sky made even darker. They look like they could swallow him up.

He doesn’t tell Geoff because there’s no way Geoff would believe him.

He doesn’t tell Ryan because he’s not sure what Ryan would do.

\---

Heist two with Ryan involved goes a little smoother initially than the first one. It’s a more traditional heist for them - flare and bombast, chaos and bloodshed. Ray ends up assigned to a rooftop in the Financial District again. It all feels very cyclical - this is where he was when Ryan tried to kill him, after all. There’s a new major banking group with its doors open as of a month and a half ago. It took Geoff exactly two days post-opening to decide he wanted to hit them next.

“We’ve got to prove to these guys,” Geoff proclaimed, “that any bank, new or old, isn’t going to be immune to our, uh —”

There was a pause.

“Charms,” Ryan suggested. “Particular charms, of course.”

Geoff snapped his fingers. “Thanks, Haywood. Yes. Our charms.”

Ray raised his hand. “Geoff.”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta ask - do we have charms? At all? Doesn’t having Gavin on board reduce our charm quota automatically by five people?”

“Well,” Gavin snapped, “alright, I see how it is, Ray.”

“Yeah. You do.”

“Sod off.”

Everyone else immediately joined in, pitching their voices up and approximating the particulars of Gavin’s accent - _sod off, you bleeding wanker, you mentalist —_

At some point they actually planned, with Jack dragging them into being professionals once again. Ryan gave a few surprisingly helpful points on guard rotations and Geoff nodded along, focused in that way that was purely isolated to a good heist. As dysfunctional as they were, this was one moment that they came together on.

During the walk to his post, Ray navigating the rooftops alone while the rest of the gang moved along their paths through the streets, he nearly lost himself in the sheer size and scope of the city. Up over the market, around a records building, and then leaning against the fifth floor balcony of an abandoned apartment building. The hardest part of it was counting the damn floors on his way up.

The angle’s good. He sets the crossbow on the top of the balcony and catches his tongue between his teeth.

There is a specific bolt currently loaded. It is Jack and Michael’s particular compound, whale oil mixed with several other reagents. When it strikes stone or brick hard enough to create a spark, the bolt explodes with enough force to break down a wall of a surprising thickness. They found out after their first failed heist that just pouring it in a bottle and throwing it didn’t usually have enough force to set it off, and nowadays, with the walls of light crackling with deadly electricity all around, it’s much easier to give it to whoever’s on the rooftops already to take care of.

At the market across the street, Ryan picks up some fruit and examines it. His left hand twitches off to the side, a display topples, and he slips the fruit into his pocket as the owner of the stall scrambles to try and save his produce. Ray sees Ryan’s smile through the spyglass. He uses the rows of glittering teeth as a metric by which to adjust the way the spyglass sits, metal creaking as it presses up against his glasses.

Gavin’s positioned on a bench with the paper clutched to hide his face like some kind of cliche. Ray rolls his eyes and checks on Michael, a hat pulled over his curls, as he kicks a few loose stones into the canal nearby. Jack is hidden in the canal nearby, ready to sweep them back to the slaughterhouse around the waterways.

Two members of the Watch finish their slow rotation around the building and amble down an alley. One head turns to watch Ryan’s sword hanging on his belt. Then they’re gone.

Leaning up against the wall opposite their target, Geoff spits his cigar off to the side and crushes it underfoot. Ray’s eyes snap to the familiar motion. Casual as anything, the man with the mustache tilts his head upwards, shielding his eyes as if from the setting sun. Really, he’s fixing his gaze right on the balcony that Ray’s on.

Confirmation of presence.

He lowers his hand again and glances around the market, slow and casual. Ray begins to estimate the location - _three and a half to four feet above the brickwork at the foot of the building, directly in the center of the wall_.

The wind’s good. In fact, it is perfectly still. Ray’s breath catches and holds. His body hums with that secret tension held between the five of them, strings holding them all there like marionettes.

Geoff’s left hand, so small it’s barely visible in Ray’s frame of view, moves down to his side clenched tight in a fist, arm turned so that the back of his hand presses against the wall.

Three fingers pointed downwards. Ray takes one more breath.

Two fingers. The slightest wind dances through the plaza. Ray’s finger twitches just barely on the trigger.

One. A shape that must be Gavin folds up his newspaper neatly and starts to stand at the very edge of Ray’s frame of vision.

Geoff’s hand clenches into a closed fist.

Ray pulls the trigger.

A moment later, the wall of the bank explodes inwards in a burst of fire and air, dust blowing across the area and into the canal.

Shouts erupt in the fading light. He slips the crossbow onto the holster along his back. Then Ray turns, slips back into the apartment building, and begins to sprint down the stairs two at a time.

\---

By the time he makes it outside and onto the streets, he catches sight of Gavin’s ridiculously oversized coat disappearing into an alley. That means he and Geoff have the ingots and whatever coin they could stuff into the bag they brought, tucked inside Gavin’s jacket when it was still empty. Now it’s his job, split with Ryan and Michael, to make enough noise that the Guard can’t even consider running after the scrawny Morley native and the tattooed man pulling him along.

The other two are certainly doing a good fucking job.

Ray spins out of the way as Ryan throws a guard away from him like he doesn’t weigh a damn thing. Then he’s gone, then in front of the man who’s falling, and he drags the sword upwards through the man’s guts while he’s off-balance. Blood sprays across the cobblestones.

“Outsider’s fucking eyes,” Ray snarls. There’s blood on his _shoes_ now.

“Yeah?” Ryan calls over, something far too amused twinkling in his eyes. Now is not the moment for shitty jokes about this information that sits between them like a stone.

Ray yanks his pistol out and fires off two shots, kicking one guard crawling around in the ribs until the man stops moving. “Go to hell,” he snaps, mere moments before a pistol shot cracks overhead. He throws himself off to the side and swivels in time to see a guard charging straight at Ryan’s back, boots pounding against stone.

Ryan turns at the sound. His empty hand sweeps across the space in front of them, and with the grandiosity of it, Ray half-expects to see the man swept away by some unknown force. Instead, the man charges a few steps forward, and _hits_ something.

Empty air sits between them. The man’s pressed up against something, though, with the way confusion covers his features. Ryan smirks and starts to move forward, something else pushing the man back.

Ray watches as Ryan simply pushes his blade into the man’s gut, angling it upwards, stepping through whatever invisible barrier has been created between them, and lowers him to the ground still skewered on the blade with something infinitely gentle in his movements.

Behind them, something else explodes. Ray spins around just in time to nearly get a sword through his shoulder. He twists to the side, pulls his arm back, and hits the guard square in the face, bone crunching underneath the blow. His other hand presses the barrel of the pistol against the man’s throat in that single moment of clarity. Then he pulls the trigger.

The guard falls back a few inches and then topples, hands pressing at the hole in his torso.

A dozen feet away, Michael shoves his fingers in his mouth and whistles, the noise sharp and piercing.

Something closes around Ray’s wrist - a gloved hand. They’ve got fifteen minutes to reach the secondary rendezvous point, whether separately or together, where the rest of the crew will pick them up. Ryan’s mask is mere inches from him, perfectly calm in the midst of chaos. Someone’s screaming - the man on the ground in front of Ray, probably, trying to push his guts back together with slick and bloody fingers.

“Let’s take my shortcut,” Ryan suggests.

Ray fucking _hates_ himself as he nods jerkily on instinct, Ryan’s fingers leaving bloodstains all along his sleeve.

\---

Ryan’s shortcut, as it turns out, involves breaking into a nearby building so thoroughly abandoned that Ray figures it must’ve last been lived in during the rat plague. Ryan seems to know it like the back of his hand, though, confidently pushing open the rotting door with a creak. Ray follows him, swallowing heavily.

Even though he probably doesn’t need to, he keeps his sword unsheathed and pointed towards whatever direction they’re heading.

“How do you know about this fucking place?” he asks as Ryan leads him down another hallway.

Ray can hear Ryan’s smile even if he can’t see it. “Back during the plague,” the voice behind the skull mask begins. Ray recoils on instinct from the doorknob he almost reached out to touch.

Typically unconcerned, Ryan reaches forward and opens it instead, walking into what must’ve once been a apartment. He begins again. “When the Watch was allowed to do practically anything to contain it, to try and keep things in order, they started throwing anyone they even suspected of being infected in with those who were definitely infected in buildings like this. Cages. No mercy. Half of Dunwall died back then, and a lot of them died in places like these. Elderly, children - all of them.”

Ray sucks in air through his teeth. Ryan glances back at him as they move into a disused bathroom, the sink snapped off the wall by age or some unknown force. “Don’t worry. They cleaned it all out years ago - but it’s never certain if it’s truly livable.”

“Did you —” Ray shakes his head. If Ryan ended up here, he’d be dead, blessed by the Outsider or not. So he rephrases. “How the hell did you find out about this place?”

Ryan slides open the window and peers through at the worn alley outside. “Meeting point’s not far from here. Question for a question again?” He climbs through and lands down on the pavement, holding out a hand. Ray ignores it and clambers through himself, dropping lightly onto the street besides him.

The two of them duck again down another side alley, Ryan keeping them to the shadows.

Ray exhales. “I guess, if you want. I was just curious.”

Their steps echo simultaneously against the empty buildings all around them. Ryan chuckles, the sound low and dangerous. Ray bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. “One of my only friends - back during the plague, when I was running from the Overseers - ended up thrown in there. I tried to get her out and almost got killed by a damn weeper two steps inside. Don’t know what happened to - well, I do. She’s dead, obviously.”

It’s the kind of tragic story that Ray was never expecting to hear in Ryan’s smooth tones. But there’s something so casual about it.

Death was casual back then. Casual and cheap. Maybe it still is.

“That’s fucked up,” Ray tries. Honest heart-to-hearts still make something sour and vile rise up in his gut.

Ryan points out a pair of stairs leading downwards into the waterways. “Over there. We keep to the right side and we’ll walk right into them. And yes, it was.”

They must still be a few minutes early as they walk along the waterway. Michael’s leaning a little further down the wall, blood still leaking sluggishly from a cut along his cheek. He gives them a casual wave and Ryan nods back, the three of them mostly silent. Waves slam against the city’s foundations, salt water splashing onto their shoes.

He tries to forget Ryan’s story as the little boat pulls up, Jack piloting it as Gavin throws up his arms and shouts in pure celebration at them. Geoff remains more composed, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. It’s good. It’s always good, even if his mind’s still running through what Ryan said on a loop, _girl building weeper dead_ over and over.

The three of them climb into the boat, the craft rocking a little underneath their feet, and then they set off back towards the Distillery District.

As they pull away, Ray glances back towards the mouth of the waterway.

For a split second, he thinks he sees the man with black eyes and damp skin staring back at him, hollow and smiling.

\---

In the slaughterhouse, Geoff stacks up the ingots on the main table, obscuring most of the map of Dunwall. Jack’s popped open a bottle of expensive wine, liquid sloshing into the glasses as he pours. Ray’s kicked himself back in a chair in the corner, feet propped up on a stool, cleaning off the crossbow. His glasses sit on the table near his elbow.

Ryan casually wanders over to lean against the wall next to him. Ray glances up at him and watches as the man slips the apple he stole before the heist out of his pocket.

Ray asks, “Yeah?”

Ryan smiles down at his shoes. His mask is off, revealing all of his expressions to the world at large. “Question for a question,” he says.

“Fuck.” That’s right. Ryan never did ask him a question after the whole conversation in the quarantined building. Ray sets down the cloth he uses to clean off the loading mechanism of his crossbow and tilts his chair back far enough that the front legs lift off the ground. “Alright. Hit me.”

“Why did you leave Karnaca?”

Ray freezes in the midst of shoving his glasses back on. Then he swallows. “I mean - I was poor. Not even poor, hell. I was homeless, didn’t have anything left there. Dunwall was a fresh start, so I snuck onto a whaling ship and hid until they docked here.”

Ryan nods serenely.

He slips a knife out of his coat pocket and goes about cutting off a piece of the apple. “That’s not what I was asking. And we both know that. But if you want to pretend that’s it, then I can’t stop you.” Then he pops the slice of apple into his mouth as a punctuation. Even though the older man’s tone hasn’t shifted, Ray can’t help but feel like he’s well and truly pissed Ryan off for once. He wants to snarl something in return - _yeah, well, maybe I don’t like dumping my tragic life story off on people, thanks_.

He doesn’t get the chance. Ryan heads calmly back over to the center of the room with everyone else.

Ray goes back to scrubbing furiously at nonexistent specks of dirt on the crossbow. When Ryan gets pissed off, people die, and he's currently the object of all that anger.

It makes a man want to clean his crossbow very, very thoroughly.

By the time he’s done, Jack comes over, having left the wine to everyone else. “Ray,” he says. Ray inclines his head in return, turning the crossbow over his hands. Then the man’s hand is on his shoulder. “Let’s go outside. Talk. You know.” Jack does this a lot after heists. He’ll talk to every member at some point, as if making sure the stress of the night hasn’t gotten to them.

Ray almost denies him. Then he thinks about all the other ways he’s fucked up talking to people tonight, and he goes.

\---

Outside, the haze of the city obscures any sign of the stars. Only the moon shines down to illuminate everything around them. A few streetlamps allow pools of yellowing light to interrupt the clean darkness of the street. In the end, the silence is welcome after the noise from inside the slaughterhouse. It’s a sentiment both Ray and Jack seem to share.

Jack sighs and crosses his arms. Ray keeps his posture as loose as he possibly can, even if his heart always climbs into his mouth during these conversations. “How’re you?” Jack asks flatly.

All Ray can do is shrug. Jack nods along, _me too_ perfectly communicated in the gentle jerk of his head.

After a few moments, he tries again. “You and Ryan seem to be getting along. Wasn’t expecting that.”

Ray scoffs. “I guess. Sure.”

“Or Ryan likes you, at least,” Jack corrects himself with an amused note in his tone. Ray stares up at the sky and refuses to reply to that. “If it’s that one-sided, thanks for putting up with him. I can try and tell him to lay off of you a little, if you want.”

Ray shakes his head. “I can fucking handle it. He’s just being a dumbass, that’s all.” Jack glances over at him again, skepticism obvious. “I mean it,” he adds, trying to sound sure.

Jack sighs. He’s definitely not annoyed. He’s tired instead, a feeling Ray intimately understands. “I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. But I’m not going to pretend Haywood isn’t something of - a loose cannon, so to speak. Geoff knows it, but he also likes loose cannons. I know it, and I like them less. And I think he’s on our side until he doesn’t need to be, and only he knows when that point is. So if there’s a problem, talk to me. Tell me. We will take care of it, one way or another.”

 _Taking care of it_ can mean a mere talk or a corpse splashing into the river, depending on how it goes.

“I know,” Ray agrees wearily. “You’ve got Geoff’s ear and shit. If anyone can get Ryan thrown out, it’s you.” He does know. He believes it. But he’s still not sure what to think, how Ryan is at once infinitely open to him and infinitely closed. How do you deal with a guy who seems to like you, but embodies everything you tore yourself away from for years?

Karnaca believes in the Outsider. Ray doesn’t - he _didn’t_ , but he has to now, watching the way Ryan twists reality around his hands like it’s mere thread and his fingers are the pieces of a loom.

Ray wants to throw up in the gutter. "I'll tell you if something big happens," he says, desperately trying to appease Jack enough to get him to leave.

Thankfully, it seems to be good enough. “Get some sleep,” Jack advises, clapping him on the shoulder and starting to move back towards the door.

“You too.”

He stands outside alone for a little while, breathing in air thick with brine until his lungs feel clean again.

When Ray walks back inside and slips towards his bed in the back room, he can feel a familiar pair of eyes watching him all the way there. He forgot, among all the weeks of him and Ryan working together like clockwork, how utterly dangerous Ryan can be to anyone he chooses to be. _If you’re going to fucking kill me tonight for not doing what you want_ , he thinks, paranoid and stupid and furious, _try your hardest, you fuck_.

Instead, the slaughterhouse creaks around him all night long, Dunwall turning over and suffering in its sleep.

\---

When he finally sleeps, he dreams of unknowable spaces, of familiar ground splintering apart beneath his feet and falling into a blackness so dark and infinite that he can see stars blinking out on the other side.


	6. so proud when the reckoning arrives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week, Ryan's the one making a huge, massive, extremely dumb mistake for all of you to behold. Also, revenge, trauma, bad communication, and backstory.
> 
> Also: this chapter's title's from "Heretic Pride" by (haha, guess who?) the Mountain Goats.

The next morning, Ryan’s seat at the table is empty.

For a few precious moments, Ray’s nearly relieved, but of course it doesn’t last. Nothing good does.

Ryan comes in late to breakfast, tossing his mask down onto the bedside table and pouring himself a glass of water. There’s something wild and dark in his gaze, like his pupils are about to swallow up the rest of his eyes. That rattled feeling fills the whole room. No one says anything for a few moments. Geoff keeps shoveling sausage onto his plate. Ray pours himself another cup of coffee and refuses to look the man on the far end of the room in the eye.

Ryan spreads butter on toast. It’s hard to say how anyone could make the motion look threatening, but he does.

The conversation, previously lively, dims down into soft murmurs. Ray gnaws on his lip the whole time in between bites of food, hard enough where he can feel himself working a wound into existence. The moment blood fills his mouth, his teeth finally having broken through, Ryan’s eyes snap up from his own plate to Ray himself. It’s as if he can somehow feel the way the inside of Ray’s mouth aches and stings.

 _Fuck this_ , Ray decides. He makes eye contact, staring right back at him as he swallows down copper. _You’re that fucking angry, come follow me and we fight this out like you want to_. He is so fucking tired of being afraid, of always being three steps behind, of not knowing. So - fine. Today, the night after the heist where he pissed Ryan off, they get to work it all out from top to bottom.

No more playing games. He thinks Ryan might appreciate that feeling in the moments before the man slits his throat.

After breakfast, he and Michael strap on weapons for the day next to each other. “Ryan looks pissed,” Michael says, lips pursed with something like displeasure.

Ray grins. He’s sure there’s blood on his teeth. “Probably.”

Michael looks at him. “Ray,” he says, “don’t do anything stupid.”

“Michael,” Ray snaps back, “I'm always smart.” He shouldn’t lash out, but there’s some foreign adrenaline burning away hot and furious in his chest.

He can feel Michael’s eyes following him all the way to the door as he steps out into the dim sunlight.

\---

Ryan doesn’t appear until late that afternoon.

Ray spends most of his morning collecting information. It’s always the first step after a heist - to feel out the way the city’s heart is beating again, to diagnose its new illnesses, and diagram them all out onto the living breathing architecture. He likes the parts that involve observation. He likes the conversations significantly less. But he grits his teeth through the latter and pries what information he can from a few members of the Hatters that he’s friendly with.

It’s when he’s sequestered in an alleyway in the Drapers Ward, eating a Tyvian pear, that he sees a familiar body block the end of the alley.

Ray drops the half-eaten pear into the street without a visible care in the world. One hand rests on his sword. He shouldn’t be confident - knows that Ryan is a better swordsman than he’s ever been and has a hundred thousand inhuman ways to pull his eyes out of his skull without laying a finger on him, probably.

But confident isn’t the right word for what he’s feeling. He just doesn’t give a fuck. If Ryan wants to kill him for not _reciprocating_ a highly personal story, then Ray’ll take it.

Ryan cocks his head slightly. Something cold slides down Ray’s spine. Ryan Haywood, the Vagabond, isn’t wearing his trademark mask. That could mean a dozen different things, good or bad. “Throwing that away was a waste,” the man says. His tone has something unknowable strung tightly through it, winding it smaller and smaller until it becomes unintelligible.

Ray shrugs. “I’ve got a lot of coin to spare right now.”

“So,” Ryan says, his hands in his pockets. “You planning to try and kill me?” He sounds curious about the concept.

“I don’t know,” Ray snarls. “Are you planning to try and kill _me_?”

There is a lengthy pause. Ray’s fingers twitch around his sword, blade sliding an inch or two out of its sheath. The pistol would be smarter, but Ray isn’t exactly feeling all that smart right now. Right when his hand is starting to ache with the grip he has around his weapon, Ryan erupts into a laugh. It’s nearly hysterical.

He inhales shakily and straightens, and Ray almost expects a bullet to end his life right then and there.

Instead, Ryan shakes his head and lets out another chuckle. “Ray. Ray, come on. If I was going to kill you, there were a dozen ways I could’ve made it look like an accident while you were _in_ the slaughterhouse. Why would I kill you for not telling me the truth? I lie all the time. Everyone does. It’d be hypocritical —”

It’s like someone’s jammed a pin inside Ray’s lungs. “You - You fucking killed people for less,” he begins.

Ryan looks at him. “At the risk of sounding maudlin, I have to let you know that you’re not most people to me.”

Ray runs a hand through his hair, letting it stick up in half a dozen directions. His whole plan for today is collapsing around him more thoroughly than a knife in his gut would’ve. “Then what the fuck am I to you, Ryan? Outsider’s crooked fucking gaze, I don’t - I don’t understand what you want. Why the fuck does it matter? Why does it matter what happened in Karnaca? It was years ago. It doesn’t matter to anyone any more.”

Abruptly Ryan’s mere inches away from him. Sometimes Ray thinks Ryan _forgets_ , or just moves on instinct - thinks _there_ and the power in his body takes him there across a single second. The intentions could be good, but ice still settles in Ray’s body. So he freezes, caught in the horrible searchlight of this moment yawning and gaping in front of him.

Ryan’s hand reaches up. His thumb presses along Ray’s jaw as if he’s touching something he’s never actually touched before. “It matters to you,” he says plainly, “very fucking much. I know you hate the Overseers, and anyone who hates the Overseers hates them because they took someone away from them. So who was it for you, Ray? Parents? Siblings? Childhood friend?”

“You hate them,” Ray hisses. He cannot bring himself to back away. “And they didn’t take shit from you —”

Ryan’s tone is perfectly earnest again in that way it was on the rooftop, the way he said he might just _kiss_ Ray. “You’re very good at being wrong about me, Ray. You know that? They took the version of me that existed when I was young. They killed that person the day they showed up on my father’s doorstep and I picked up the gun from underneath the bed.” He’s talking almost casually about something so deeply traumatic that it makes the tiny part of Ray’s heart still equipped to feel empathy spasm in his body. “And if you don’t want to tell me yet - that’s fine. I’ll wait. I’m patient.”

“I know you are. Kind of wish you fucking weren’t.” His thumb keeps brushing along Ray’s hands, encased in those stupid fucking gloves.

The two of them simply stand. Then Ryan lowers his hand and Ray skitters back like a wounded animal, breath rushing from his throat so hard that it feels like his lungs are about to rupture in his body.

“When I was younger,” Ryan begins. Half of Ray wants to block him out immediately, but that earnest tone hasn’t gone anywhere. So he curls his hands into fists at his sides and thinks _after this, you get out_. “After the Outsider found me. You know what he wants, Ray? He wants people who are interesting. That’s what he told me. I was _interesting_. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I knew I wanted revenge, though, so what I did for years was in between fighting for food and shelter and whatever the fuck else I needed, I used to kill Overseers.”

The way he says this is utterly calm, as if he’s talking about the weather or city politics.

“They didn’t,” Ray begins. But he can’t say _they didn’t do anything_ , because they did. Whatever happened knocked something in Ryan completely out of alignment. It made it permanently wrong, and now Dunwall reaps the consequences.

Ryan steps closer to him. Ray draws back until he hits a wall.

Shit.

Ryan’s voice is still rolling from his chest, threatening and warm and conspiratorial all at once. “They didn’t manage to do what they wanted. But they were doing it to other kids like me, and they were killing anyone they called a heretic or torturing them in Coldridge. So I’d kill them when they were out on patrol. I’d plan out different ways so it never seemed like it was one killer. I’d space them out. I’d choose carefully. And I'm fairly sure that's the only reason the Outsider bothered with some nobody teenager in Dunwall.”

He waits expectantly.

Ray licks his lips. “Why did you stop?” he asks. He feels caught, like Ryan’s thrown up one of those invisible barriers he used during the heist to trap him here.

Suddenly, he realizes that Ryan doesn’t need the barrier, not when the man's body is doing the job anyway.

Ryan’s smile is almost beautiful. It makes his eyes esem brighter. “As much as you’re wrong about me, Ray, you’re good at asking the right questions sometimes.” It’s condescending, but at the same time, Ray’s not going to fight over it. “I got older. Got complacent. Hate like that, justified or not, becomes background noise when you’re older. I almost forgot until I ran into you.”

“Fuck,” Ray says helplessly.

Ryan _beams_. “That’s about how I felt.”

“Fuck,” Ray repeats. Then he breathes in and tries to continue. “I’m not - I don’t believe in that kind of shit. I hate them, but I hate the _Abbey_ , Ryan, not Overseers, come on —”

Ryan grins again, a motion so savage that Ray could imagine the man leaning forward mere inches in order to rip his throat out. “You think I wouldn’t burn down the entire Abbey if I got the fucking chance, Ray?” There is not an ounce of levity even with the smile. Ray is absolutely certain that if they gave Ryan whale oil and a match over in Whitecliff, the Abbey's seat of power, the inferno would be visible from one end of the Isles to the other.

He wants to snarl something self-righteous again.

But he _can’t_. There were so many moments, sitting on a rooftop, ten and orphaned in Karnaca, where he’d close one eye and hold his thumb out to cover the head of one of the Overseers below, imagining that if he pushed down just enough, the skull would pop underneath the mask.

While Ray was playing pretend, Ryan was going through with it, over and over again.

Ryan’s anger is also his anger. That’s the problem. They share that fuel between them in the way they share so much else. So Ray hates it. He hates how similar they are - how it’s not so much that he’s three steps behind Ryan as much as Ryan and him are perfectly in step with each other, but Ryan’s just gotten into the fucking house first and taken everything before Ray even got the courage to get past the threshold.

“I think I hate you,” Ray says out loud, even if he doesn’t mean it. He thinks he hates how Ryan makes him feel - small and petty and _limited_. Ray’s never thought he was going to die as someone who mattered, but he at least wanted to feel like he did whatever he could with what he had. And here comes Ryan _fucking_ Haywood, with a mark from a heretical god and doing everything that Ray wanted to when he was young, all those revenge fantasies played out again and again in the back of his mind, but ten times over, ten times more real, ten times better.

Ryan’s searching his face for something. Ray schools his expression into his best and most perfect deadpan.

If he’s lucky, maybe Ryan will take the bait and just stop.

Ryan’s face splits apart into another grin. “We all lie all the time, right? That’s what I said.”

All the anger in Ray’s mouth cools into exhaustion. He just wants to win _something_ here, just once. Ryan almost killed him, ingratiated himself into the crew in mere days, and has proven that he knows Ray so completely and marrow-deep that maybe there’s nothing he can do to get the upper hand.

So he does the only thing he can think of, childish as it is. Ray turns around and glances around the alley. He can climb up onto one of the cooling units there, hoist himself up onto the window above it, and be up on the roofs in a matter of minutes. No dead end is truly dead in Dunwall, merely stalled.

Ryan’s voice rolls out behind him like a plague in and of itself. “I’ve been thinking about what you’ve told me, Ray.”

“Yeah, well,” Ray snaps, rotating to face the cooling unit and judging how far up he’s going to have to hit the wall in order to grab the metal edge, “think more and talk less.”

His right boot manages one step forward. Then Ryan continues: “And I want to know if it was one or both of your parents. No plague in Karnaca to kill them, and there’s only one way you end up homeless on your own accord that young and that angry at the Abbey.”

It is the thinnest thread that has been keeping Ray’s temper from unraveling. He is running on minimal sleep and Ryan is here with the knife, prodding, poking, trying to find the rawest nerve.

The nerve he’s found is still so raw, years later, that Ray’s entire body _sings_ with it in that moment.

He whirls around. Ryan’s smirk doesn’t even flicker. And maybe it’s with that same bone-deep knowing that Ryan has for him, but Ray can guess what Ryan’s expecting. A punch, maybe, or a useless threat with a sword or pistol. A few snarky comments and then Ray running away, like he’s always running.

Instead, Ray throws his entire weight at Ryan’s ribcage, pushing off the ground so hard that his ankle aches with the motion. The two of them topple, Ryan automatically reaching up to try and push him off, so Ray, half in an alley in the Drapers Ward and half caught in a Karnaca street, hits him so hard in the face that something snaps underneath his fist.

Another hit. Another.

Suddenly they’re rolling and Ray almost thrashes underneath the weight of Ryan’s body, mass and force combining to reverse their positions. “Ray,” Ryan says, so _patient_ and  _condescending_ even with blood dripping from his nose.

Ray tries to wedge the sole of his boot up against Ryan’s stomach or gut to push him off, jamming the steel toes up against anything soft and fleshy he can feel. There’s blood in his mouth, leaking hot and wet from where he must’ve bit against the inside of his cheek.

“Ray,” Ryan repeats, tone turned to ice with calm.

“You’re an asshole,” Ray replies, and spits blood in Ryan’s face.

Ryan chuckles and wipes it away, red lost against the dark fabric. “And you’re acting like a child,” he reprimands gently.

The two of them stare at each other.

With a single moment of insight, Ray sees his opening. He takes it. He grins, bright and bloody, and Ryan, in a moment of rare human reflex, automatically almost smiles back. Then Ray curls his fingers around the loose brick half an inch away from his right hand and swings it towards Ryan’s skull. Ryan’s reflexes are the only thing that save him from a concussion. He throws his right arm up. Something cracks in his arm and Ray drops the cinderblock instantly.

Then he pushes himself out backwards from underneath Ryan, scrambling to his feet and spitting more blood out to the side. “I don’t owe you shit,” he snarls, “and I definitely don’t owe you my tragedy, you asshole.”

“Outsider’s fucking eyes,” Ryan mutters as he straightens, one hand wrapped around his forearm. That in itself almost brings Ray up short, because he’s pretty sure he’s never heard Ryan invoke that particular oath, for obvious reasons. “You really do hate yourself that much, don’t you, Ray?”

Ray pulls himself up onto the cooling unit, balancing there and securing his grip on the roof above in order to keep climbing upwards. Ever upwards.

The tiny part of him that’s not furious and terrified and _aching_ wants to turn around and apologize, to at least look at the wound that he’s left behind. But it disappears underneath everything else, there and then gone.

\---

What happened in Karnaca -

Look. What happened in Karnaca is that people died, and people die all the time. Sometimes those people are parents, and one time they’re Ray’s parents specifically _._ Sometimes mothers are lit aflame in front of a crowd for the public spectacle, to prove that even so-called witches can burn. Sometimes fathers are gutted in apartments for trying to defend their wives from accusations of witchcraft. Sometimes an Overseer grabs a boy’s arm and tries to haul him away from his screaming mother and his dying father until that boy bites him hard enough to draw blood and runs for it.

Sometimes that same boy sneaks into the crowd two days later with a stolen knife, thinking he’s going to be a hero, and watches instead as his mother’s skin blackens and splits open and cracks under the heat. Fat began to leak out as the skin opened, hissing and spitting and feeding the flames.

She looked right at him.

Ray thinks about that sometimes. His worst dreams feature that moment, when the smoke began to float upwards from the pile of wood, and the second afterwards where he’s absolutely certain that she looked down at the crowd and saw him half-crouched and almost crying in the middle of the group.

He remembers the eight Overseers standing by, placid but watchful as the woman on the pyre screamed and screamed and screamed until she couldn’t anymore.

It doesn’t take very long for someone to die while burning. Shock or the smoke will do it just as fast as the sheer damage.

But it takes a long, long time for the body itself to burn itself blackened.

He knows. He knows because he waited in an alley nearby, until the Overseers dumped the charred remains in a cart like so much refuse and wheeled her away.


	7. in the buzzing center of the dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on a roll recently! Some humanizing moments for Ryan, a semi-real conversation, and Geoff being Team Dad.

When Ray arrives back at the slaughterhouse two and a half days later, he gets approximately four steps inside before Geoff grabs him by the back of the collar and yanks him towards the corner room.

Officially the space is Geoff’s office, as the only place in the slaughterhouse with proper walls separating it from everything else. He gets a good look at the relief visible on Gavin and Michael’s faces on the opposite side of the room, right before the office door slams shut behind him.

Ray turns to face Geoff and opens his mouth to begin the explanation he’s rehearsed internally for the past hour.

Geoff, however, cuts him off with brutal efficiency. “What the fuck happened?”

“Geoff,” Ray begins wearily, “I’m not your fucking kid —”

“No.” Abruptly the other man is getting in his face, leaning closer. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Geoff didn’t stake out a whole piece of territory for them on everyone else’s skills. They all leaned on his skills as a leader and a tactician, his ability to be both disarmingly friendly in one moment and cutthroat in the next. “No, you fucking listen. So here’s what happens. Two days ago, Ryan wanders back in a little before midnight with his elbow so busted up that Jack had to reset it for him, bleeding all over the place. That’s fine. Shit happens. But you aren’t back by two in the morning, so I go up to Ryan, and I ask, _hey, Haywood, you seen Ray while you were out?_ ”

“Why is everyone always asking Ryan about me?” Ray mumbles, trying to redirect the conversation anywhere other than _nearly three_ _days ago_.

Geoff gives him a look that shuts him up instantly. “And you know what Ryan says to me? He looks at me for a second, this long soulful fuckin’ look, hair fluttering in the damn breeze like he’s some kind of artist’s model, some high end statue out of fucking _Morley_ , and says, _just give Ray a few days_. That’s what he says. And you know me. I’m a patient man.”

Ray snorts to himself at the concept of Geoff and patience. He folds his arms. Geoff gives him a look like if he makes one more noise, he might actually end up eating one of his own fingers. “So I say, _alright, Ryan, okay_. Not because I trust him, right, but because if you don’t show up in a few days, me and Jack are going to tie that fucker down to a chair and peel off his fingernails until he gives up the proverbial ghost. So we don’t want to have to chase him down. And guess how many days we decide to give him?”

“Three,” Ray answers wearily.

Geoff nods slowly. “That’s right. Three. And we are - two and three-fourths of the way through that time period, Ray, so if you had waited a couple more hours before coming back in here, you might’ve walked in on me and Jack pulling your best friend’s nails out with pliers, because you couldn’t give either of us _a little warning_.” His hands end up on Ray’s shoulders during the last few words, shaking him back and forth.

“He’s definitely not my best friend,” Ray corrects.

His statement is instantly overridden. “So here’s the fucking thing, okay - here’s the thing. Don’t _ever_ pull shit like that again.” Ray thinks he’s about to get a word in, but then Geoff stops shaking him back and forth and his voice softens a little. “And I want to know if Ryan pulled something. Blackmailed you, threatened you, whatever.” There’s genuine concern there, as misplaced as it is.

Ray closes his eyes and exhales slowly. “Geoff,” he says, “I just needed some time off.”

The two of them look at each other for a moment. Geoff’s eyes focus on his, trying to peel away any lies. “If you need some time off,” he says slowly, “fucking tell me.”

“Okay.”

“So what actually fucking happened?”

Ray has a feeling he’s not going to leave this office until he gives up some tiny part of the truth, even if it’s just enough of a morsel to appease Geoff’s anger. It’s anger on his behalf - anger _for_ him, which is something Ray appreciates, even if he’s still lying in this moment. “Me and Ryan had an argument,” he says slowly. “About some things. Like, philosophical shit. Not a big deal. I got - heated, and whatever. Had to take a walk.”

“A walk that took two and a half days,” Geoff points out.

“Had a lot of energy to get out,” Ray nearly _snarls_ back. It’s him fresh out of Karnaca all over again, just off the boat and hitting Dunwall’s docks, nearly feral in his defensiveness, and Geoff knows it.

The man’s gaze softens slightly, a strange look above the moustache and tattoos. “Whatever’s going on with you,” he says carefully, so genuine that it’s like a punch to the gut, “whatever you need, we’ll help you out. All of the crew will. Even Gavin, though who knows what the fuck that idiot can do. Okay?”

Ray breathes unsteadily, hands closing into fists and then loosening slowly. “Okay,” he says.

“Good.” Geoff sighs. Then he jerks his head towards the door, expression shifting back into something usually disgruntled. “Now get the fuck out of my office.”

Ray lets some of the tension leak out of his shoulders. He throws Geoff the smallest of smiles, barely a twitch, in an attempt to reassure him. And he goes.

\---

Gavin practically caterwauls his name the moment he’s back out in the main room. Before Ray has to step aside to let Gavin barrel past him into the wall, Michael shoves Gavin aside in order to punch Ray hard in the shoulder, friendly as can be. “The fuck,” Michael says, half-annoyed and half in good humor, “is with that vanishing act, huh, asshole?”

“Someone’s got to keep things interesting around here,” Ray snarks. It’s a good lie. It is, however, still a lie to begin with. Michael rolls his eyes and shoves an untouched apple at his chest hard enough that his sternum nearly hurts with the impact. He kind of deserves it, though, so no hard feelings even if there’s a bruise later.

Michael looks him over as if checking for some visible trauma.

Then he grabs Gavin by the collar to yank him away. “Fuckin’ eat something, dipshit,” he throws over his shoulder, pulling Gavin’s flailing form back towards the table in the corner, cards scattered across it. “Get some sleep before you die.” It’s good advice. But Ray’s keyed up on adrenaline all over again after he finally slept last night, in an old hideout deep in the Financial District stinking of sewer and rot.

It wasn’t a good night’s sleep, but it was certainly sleep.

Ray turns the apple over in his hands. He runs his tongue against his teeth. “You guys seen Ryan today?” he calls over to the corner.

Michael snaps out a too-quick _no_ in the same moment that Gavin squawks out _he’s moping on the roof_. There’s a smack as Michael reaches over and slaps Gavin upside the head, furious, as Gavin wails Michael’s name loud enough to startle a bird that must be trapped up in the rafters. Its wings flutter as it circles around frantically and nearly slams into the ceiling. Michael must be trying to protect Ray in the only way he knows how - something brutal. It’s kind of sweet, even if Gavin’s right there to ruin things all over again. The two of them immediately bend towards their card game, Michael’s eyes snapping over to Ray again in the moment before Gavin places another card down and distracts him.

Yeah. Okay. Absence makes the heart grow fonder or whatever.

He sets his crossbow down on the worktable in the corner along with all of Jack’s other inventions, an obvious sign to the man who runs this corner of things that he’s back whenever he sees it.

Ray exhales, shoves the apple into his coat pocket, and slips around the side of the warehouse to climb the familiar path up to the roof.

\---

A wooden pallet sits on one side of the roof, balanced carefully up against an old smokestack that must’ve produced toxins years ago when this slaughterhouse was still really its namesake. On the other side stands Ryan, mask off and a row of knives set dangerously close to his boots. Ray keeps his steps soft as he climbs, knowing all the places to avoid making the wood creak and the metal echo with his steps.

Ryan picks up one of the knives. The motion is utterly fluid - knife to hand to throw, metal arcing end over end until it embeds itself an inch deep in the pallet with a satisfying _thunk_. Then he does something else - a small motion with his hand, between a mere twitch of his fingers and a yank back.

The knife pops out of the pallet, hits the ground, bounces twice, and spins out across the roof. Ryan swears a blue streak to himself and turns to follow it.

His eyes meet Ray’s right as Ray sets his boot down on the handle of the wayward knife, trapping it against the stone. “That’s unimpressive as shit,” Ray says.

“Yeah, well.” Ryan folds his arms. “Why don’t you fucking try it?” There’s no real venom behind it.

Ray shrugs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. His fingers wrap around the apple, a nice weight to ground him. “Nah.” It’s odd to even think of Ryan practicing. Everything he’s seen has come so naturally, so fluidly, that seeing him even begin to _struggle_ is nearly foreign. Ray steps off of the knife and moves around the roof, watching as Ryan leans down and picks up the blade.

No gloves. He can see the mark on Ryan’s hand and the five or six cuts still open and red against his palm. _From the knife_ , he realizes. Trying to recall it or whatever he’s doing and cutting himself open along the way, unwilling to risk damaging the gloves.

It’s almost humanizing in its utter inhumanity.

Ray sits down on Ryan’s side of the roof, facing the pallet. He props his back up against one of the cooling units and takes the apple out of his pocket. Ryan looks at him for a long moment, holding the knife awkwardly. “Please,” Ray says with a grand gesture towards the makeshift target, “don’t stop fucking embarrassing yourself on my account.” Ryan mutters something unintelligible to himself and heads back over to the same position.

The knife strikes the pallet again. This time, when Ryan makes the motion, it’s faster and more fluid. The blade pulls back out of the pallet and just reverses along its previous path. Ryan’s hand just barely snaps up, catching the fucking blade itself between his thumb and forefinger, the rest of his hand on the actual handle.

It would be impressive. Then Ryan curses and shakes out his hand, a few drops of blood scattering across the ground. Not quite good enough, then.

“This whole thing seems kind of useless,” Ray points out, taking another bite of his apple. He keeps talking even with his mouth full, the food mangling his words. “Like, why not just bring a bunch of knives t’throw around like y’normally do?”

Ryan shrugs. “I already do. Heists can be a problem, though. Long nights. A lot of guards. I noticed, after the last heist, that I was losing them in bodies. Good knives aren’t cheap. I’d like to be able to be economical about this, if nothing else.” It takes all of Ray’s exhausted willpower to not burst out laughing, because thoughts of being _economical_ about murdering City Watch members is so - fucking Ryan.

“So this is new,” he infers, trying to keep the conversation going.

“Yeah.” Ryan runs his injured hand through his hair, unconcerned about getting blood all over himself. “Went out the next morning. Or night. It was still dark out. Found some things, made a deal again. Thus why I missed most of breakfast.”

Ray hasn’t even thought about the way Ryan came in, tired and almost marred somehow, three mornings ago. He thought it was anger at him keeping the man awake. But maybe it wasn’t just that.

The two of them lapse into an odd silence.

Ryan tries the trick a few more times. Mixed results. And Ray watches, really fucking watches. It’s hard not to. Ryan, despite being an absolute shithead and a man who loves to prod at shit he doesn’t understand, is magnetic to watch in these moments. Everything is deliberately timed and practiced and weighed, action and reaction. It’s art in disgusting violent motion.

Ray chews on another bite of apple.

He tilts his head as Ryan pulls the knife back again, watching him automatically move his arm into the same position and then just close his hand a little too late, the knife dropping onto the ground a foot behind Ryan’s hand.

“This is fucking hilarious,,” Ray intones, perfectly deadpan. Ryan gives him the same look he gives people before he starts slitting throats, and Ray’s teeth crunch into the apple, completely unconcerned. “Also, you’re thinking too much.”

“Are you trying to give me advice?” Ryan sounds both exasperated and confused at once. “You, giving me advice. After trying to kill me with a brick. After me upsetting you so much that you told me semi-seriously that you hated me. This is where we’re at.” And Ray’s enjoying this, really. Ryan has never been confused about him until this moment.

How the tables fucking turn.

He tucks the half-eaten apple back into his pocket and shrugs. “Oh, trust me,” he says, standing again, “you’re a dumbass. But you’re also my coworker, and sometimes you make some okay points, I guess. Again, though: still a dumbass.”

Ryan’s voice turns nearly singsong, low baritone rumbling out of his throat with rhythm and pitch to it. “Said the pot to the kettle.” And it’s not normal, but it’s the closest to normalcy they’ll probably ever get.

“Anyway,” Ray mutters, leaning up against the smokestack again, “you’re thinking too much. I know I’m a sniper, which means I think about tons of shit all the time, because I can handle it, but this whole _catching something_ thing is, uh, not that deep. You look like you’re about to publish a fucking book on the exact physics and trajectory of that knife.”

“A great scholar of our time,” Ryan replies drily.

He picks up another knife, the one behind him seemingly abandoned for now. On a whim, Ray reaches down and pockets it. The blade is wickedly sharp, something he can see without even touching the edge. “Hey. Try it, and if it doesn’t work, you can stab me a little bit or whatever to release the frustration.”

Ryan laughs, a short bark of noise from deep in his chest, and throws. It’s a perfect shot again. He pulls his arm back, the knife flies back, and he barely catches it, fingers wrapping around the hilt just in time.

“See?” Ray stretches his legs out on the roof. “I’m always fucking right.”

Ryan mutters something exasperated to himself and flips the knife around before setting it on the ground next to its kin. Then he moves over to lean against the smokestack, perpendicular to Ray. The two of them sit there in silence for a moment. Ray chews on some last bits of apple, only the core left, and drops it onto the ground next to him. He closes his eyes for a moment and listens to the sounds of the city at work around him.

Soothing during the day and terrifying at night.

Ryan’s voice rumbles next to him. “Are you just waiting to stab me with my own knife, then?”

“Nah.” The jig’s up. Ray reaches into his pocket and holds up the nearly stolen knife. Ryan takes it wordlessly. “I’m not - I really don’t fucking trust you. And I stand by what I said. You don’t get shit from me for free. You can say whatever you want about me and you understanding each other or whatever, but - understanding doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”

He doesn’t need to see Ryan’s smile. He can hear it instead. “Empathy not worth anything to you, Ray?”

“Feelings don’t keep you from dying.”

“Got me there.”

“Look.” He glances up in time to see the flicker of displeasure pass across Ryan’s features, so quick that it barely even counts as visible. “I know what you want, I think. But I don’t know if I’m willing to give up that much, you get it? Not even Michael - not even _Geoff_  knows what happened in Karnaca. They know something happened. That’s it.”

“I understand,” Ryan says, “you’ve made a personal brand off of not telling anyone anything and cracking jokes about it, Ray, but trauma still recognizes trauma.” The way he says it is so plain. But Ray’s heard it before. Damaged people know damage. In Dunwall, with his chance to start over, Ray still found himself gravitating towards the same kinds of people he always did, boasting the kind of trauma he could understand viscerally and immediately. Thus: the crew. But at the same time, damaged people also cause damage.

Ryan is damaged and dangerous. The man himself knows that. But he doesn’t seem to understand that Ray can only hold so much damage before cutting his losses and running, and here, he only has so many places left to run.

Ray swallows and tries to pull the subject away from himself. The transition is clumsy, but the question is downright fucking provocative. “... What’s it like? You know. Being - marked or whatever you want to call it.””

Ryan freezes. Then he turns the corner of the smokestack the two of them have been keeping between them, and Ray closes his eyes. Finally, he’s recognized that Ryan won’t kill him for anything less than an absolute backstabbing. He is safe. He feels unsafe, but he is perfectly safe.

The man’s fingers brush against his jaw, holding his head there, and Ray’s eyes snap open.

For a moment, he’s absolutely fucking certain that Ryan’s going to kiss him for real this time. Ryan presses his thumb along Ray’s lips for a moment, pressure so light and restrained that it’s barely anything at all. Ray stares. It’s difficult to feel both nailed down and weightless, but he _does_.

With the way Ryan’s staring, Ray is abruptly aware of the fact that he’s wearing the look of two sleepless nights and a layer of Dunwall grime. He licks his lips and Ryan’s eyes snap to the motion.

For a moment, the man in front of him looks undeniably hungry, a wordless starving animal, and Ray almost expects for Ryan to _bite down_.

Then Ryan’s smile tilts the corners of his mouth up and he pulls away. “It hurt,” he says, voice so soft that the wind coming off the sea could yank it away. “The mark itself, anyway. But the first time I did anything with it, in that dream, that place where the world falls apart at the edges - it felt like that.”

Ray sits there like he’s been paralyzed, like Jack’s taken one of the other formulas he made a while ago, the one that makes a man’s muscles lock up for six hours, and jammed it right into the back of his neck. _Like that_ could mean anything. But Ray knows what Ryan means - that acidic cocktail of terror and want and anger and pinpoint awareness that settles in his gut every time Ryan looks at him.

Maybe Ryan feels the same way. Maybe he’s just better at hiding it.

“That’s fucking terrifying,” he says slowly. “You’re - fucking terrifying.”

Ryan looks at him, perfectly amused. “Thank you.” Abruptly he straightens, brushing some non-existent dirt off of the bottom of his jacket. Ray staggers to his feet, tugged by the thread of the moment still winding between them. He watches as Ryan picks up the set of knives and wraps them neatly in the leather he keeps them in, sliding the knife Ray almost got away with stealing in with the rest.  

He turns back for a moment.  “I’m sure Geoff has something for us to do. Come downstairs whenever you’re ready.” Ray opens and closes his mouth, and between the two motions Ryan’s gone.

Ray creeps over to the edge of the roof. He sees Ryan on the ground below, heading towards the slaughterhouse door.

The man with the black eyes stands casually in the middle of the street, looking up at Ray.

He smiles as Ryan walks right through him. Then he jerks his head towards the door that Ryan just walked through, a motion so abrupt that it looks like a marionette held up on strings. _Go and see_ in anything but words.

 _Damaged people cause damage_ , Ray thinks, and wonders if the damage has already been done.


	8. the blood-rich light has drained away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The longest chapter yet, I believe - and very plot-heavy. We've got one more plot-heavy chapter coming and then we'll have a slight cooldown, if my plans work out as intended. Communication is hard, folks, but our boys are trying here in this chapter. Maybe they even get somewhere.

“You two are on a contract hit together,” Geoff says idly, more concerned with the papers spread out across the table. He rummages through them and picks up one Jack’s marked with a dog-eared corner, holding it out. Ryan takes it and turns it around to read it. Ray skims the details over his shoulder. Higher up in the City Guard, likely with an entourage of some type - passing through the Legal District tomorrow between eight and ten at night.

Fairly standard, besides the entourage - which is probably why Ryan’s going with him.

Ray takes the paper and examines the sketch. Longer blond hair, green eyes. The notes include mention of a scar extending along his jaw, three inches long.

Geoff’s voice drags him out of his reverie. “I know you two have had some issues recently,” he begins in the voice of a worried parent, and Ray wants to slam his own head against the table until he just leaves this plane of existence altogether. “But I need you both to prove to me that you can work together professionally, if nothing else. So Ray, don’t start shit this time, please. And Ryan, for fuck’s sake, don’t condescend at Ray. Nothing upsets him more.”

“I don’t get upset, Geoff,” Ray tries, just as Ryan says, _oh, trust me, I know_.

He glares over at Ryan. Ryan smiles at Geoff casually, ignoring what must be the obvious look on Ray’s face.

“Off to a great damn start,” Geoff grumbles. He runs a hand through his hair, thoroughly exhausted within moments. “Right. Go. Do whatever you want to do. I expect good results, gentlemen.”

As if Ray won’t deliver. He always delivers, even that one time Geoff stuck Gavin with him like some kind of loud Morley-accented parasite.

“You really don’t have to come with me,” Ray says. Ryan’s following him over to the workbench, watching as he picks up the crossbow. “Like, I can get this guy on my own. Easy. Bet you twenty coins that he’s too in love with himself to even wear a hat and hide his face, ‘cause that’s the City Watch for you.”

“Ray,” Ryan says, his tone unwavering, “I’d rather not get on Geoff’s bad side here. I’m going with you. If nothing else, I’ve never really seen you do your actual job.”

Ray’s hands pause on the crossbow, half-lifting it up. “You’re doing this because you want to see me shoot someone.”

Ryan’s smile is soft and small, making his eyes seem that much warmer. “You’ve seen me,” he points out. He clasps his gloved hands in front of him, the motion deliberate and slow. _You’ve seen me_ , he says, but what he means is everything underneath - the mark on his hand, what that mark really means, and that slow boiling hatred that he plays off as anything else. Ryan has a thing that Ray’s noticed - a requirement of tit for tat, of eye for an eye.

He won’t let Ryan see his past. His present is easier to communicate, the cleanness of that bolt passing through the air and punching through the skull.

It’s just simpler.

Ray’s fingers clench against the crossbow, fingers digging against where the metal of the mechanism and the wooden stock meet. “Fine,” he says.

He doesn’t look back as Ryan wishes him a good night.

\---

That night, Ray’s dreams circle back around again and again to that phrase in Ryan’s voice, reverent and nearly terrified - _that dream, that place where the world falls apart at the edges_. He doesn’t know what it means, at least not consciously. But unconsciously, there’s this moment - the pyre in Karnaca frozen, him stumbling forward an inch or two, reaching out, close enough to almost touch the flames.

Then the world fractures. The pyre cracks open. He stands on something just big enough for his feet, his balance shifting and scrambling, a small island of rock in the midst of ground blasted apart by some unknowable explosion.

Over. And over. Every time he gets an inch or two closer to the flames before it all collapses around him. He can touch her. He can touch the burning body of his mother, pull her down, _save_ her, impossibly —

There is no sound there, time frozen and crystallizing horribly. His shout, even as it tears its way out of his throat every time, echoes out towards nothing.

\---

For once, there’s no real sound on a rooftop in the Legal District either.

The district itself tends to be quieter than the rest of Dunwall. There’s none of the continuous thunk of machinery and manufacturing, far enough from the major docks that activity’s slowed to a grind. Lawyers need peace and quiet, it seems, to practice their unholy trade.

Ryan scouted it out earlier that afternoon before they met on the rooftop overlooking a few familiar law offices.

_Familiar_ meaning, of course, that the offices belong to the lawyers that Geoff had bribed to be surreptitiously _with them_ if anything ever went wrong. Nothing, thankfully, had ever gone wrong enough to include them.

There is a little sting of confusion at Ryan not wearing a mask. It makes sense. They’re sticking to rooftops. No one’s likely to see him. But Ray has so thoroughly associated being out and about in the city with the skull mask that he keeps sneaking glances over at Ryan. It just seem like he’s waiting for the guy’s fucking face to peel off and reveal something else. It's  _unnatural_.

They end up on the rooftop of an apartment building, Ryan sitting cross-legged on the edge of the roof as Ray lays down on his stomach and gets to work setting up.

A year ago, Jack built an extended stock to make the crossbow more comfortable to use for moments like this. Medium distances and average waits are easy by now without laying down, but the building’s so damn tall that he’s going to need stability. There is a perfect sight line down into the plaza - no trees, no other buildings, not even a fucking slope to possibly obscure the shot.

Ray, as much as he’d prefer not to, will give Ryan credit on this one. Despite not being a sniper, the man’s got an eye for vantage points.

He says as much about twenty minutes into their companionable silence. “I know I’m the sniper, so I’m supposed to be better than you at this - and I am, hands down. But I would totally trust you to pick vantage points for me every once in a while.”

“Aw,” Ryan practically _coos_ , hand clutched to his heart, “Ray, you’re just so fucking sweet that I might die.”

“We need to find something you’re not good at,” Ray seethes, moving a little in order to adjust his angle. The roof is slightly less uneven here, the plane flatter in relation to the ground. “Like genuinely bad at. I don’t think there’s a single thing. I wasn’t aware being marked by scary mythic shit makes you automatically good at everything you do, but now I’m pissed as hell about it.”

“I seem to remember being told that I overthink some things,” Ryan says drily.

Ray waves it away. “That’s barely even a flaw. If you had pulled off the mask and had, like, eight huge scars on your face, I might’ve been like _okay, that’s fair_ , but you couldn’t even give me that. Fucking pretty boy.”

“Oh, so I’m _pretty_ now? That’s a new one, even if you’re acting like a fucking baby.”

“You’re the one shitting his pants over me saying you can identify a basic sight line better than Gavin can. If anyone’s the baby --”

“Gavin?” Ryan repeats, so genuinely appalled that Ray has to suppress a snort of laughter. “That entire compliment was based off of _Gavin_ as the minimum requirement? Ray. I’m _offended_.” Unfortunately Ray can’t laugh right now. He’s focused on the image through the spyglass, watching the group of City Watch members pass the corner of the building. Ryan’s saying something else, but Ray’s counting - three, four, five guards surrounding a man in the middle.

Hair on the longer side, a sunny blond that dulls in the grey afternoon.

“I mean, here’s the thing,” Ryan says idly. His voice could not be further away. “I’d at least like to know I’d outdo, say, Jack at finding a good sight line.”

The prospective target's head turns. Green eyes. _A little more_ , Ray thinks, fiddling with the spyglass. _Turn your fucking head two degrees more_.

Ryan’s voice makes excellent background noise. Ray’s finger rests on the trigger, tense and relaxed all at once. He catches the tail end of Ryan’s next sentence. “... and I really just think that your standards are too low, Ray. And that’s a shame.”

Below, the man turns a touch more to say something to one of his guards. There is a scar on his jaw, following the sharp line of his jaw, three inches long.

“It’s really a fucking shame,” Ryan muses, his voice soft and lulling, and Ray pulls the trigger.

The bolt punctures through the target’s throat, having arced perfectly in the space between two of the guards. Blood sprays dark and wet through the air, and he watches through the scope for a moment as the man, whose name Ray has already permanently forgotten, staggers a step or two to the side, his hand pressed against his neck. There is too much bleeding to staunch.

There is a noise that a wound like that makes - a gasping wet pop as the victim tries to breathe. They can’t hear it from this distance, of course, but Ray knows anyway.

“Alright,” Ray says, standing up and stretching for a moment. “Let’s go.”

Ryan’s still sitting on the ground. “What?”

Ray points in the general direction of the man who is either dead or close to it on the street below and turns back towards the other side of the roof. “Job’s done,” he says. It takes a few moments before Ryan’s footsteps catch up with his, the man falling into step again beside him like nothing happened.

The two of them remain absolutely silent until they reach the ground again, Ryan merely disappearing and reappearing on the ground below as Ray clambers down and drops off of ledges and balconies until his boots hit cobblestone. The silence lurks over them, though Ray can feel Ryan’s gaze creeping over to him every few seconds. He’s dying to say something but seems, for once, unsure of Ray’s reaction.

The tension, eventually, builds to a point where even Ray’s general obliviousness can’t defeat it. “Okay,” he says. “Spit it out, man.”

Ryan chuckles as they approach an old iron gate. He folds his arms as Ray fiddles with the lock, years of living on the streets making it easy for him to fiddle with a rusted old lock until it pops open. “You’re not going to like it,” he predicts.

Ray puts his shoulder against the gate and shoves. Hinges screech as it scrapes open a few feet, enough for them to pass through. “When do I ever like anything?” he points out, slipping through and into the side alley. A rat scurries away into a drainage pipe, puddles of rainwater and filth dotted all the way to the other end of the alley.

The classic Dunwall look, in all honesty. Cleanliness only means anything inside and in the richer parts of town.

Ryan shrugs. “You’re more dangerous than you like to play at, Ray. Not worth shit with a sword, but with aim like that, you don’t need to be any good up close.”

“You almost killed me,” Ray points out, “thanks to me being shit with a sword.” It’s a compliment in their line of work, but he feels like he has to jab at the obvious weakness in the whole thing. Ryan chuckles a little and pauses at the mouth of the alley, glancing around. “So like, dangerous? Probably not. Got a specific skillset? Sure, and it only works in situations where I have the ability to plan.”

Ryan’s lips twitch upwards in a smile. “Doesn’t make you any less dangerous in your own right, Ray.” Ray opens his mouth to spit out a response. Then Ryan does the whole disappearing act again right onto a short roof to Ray’s left, reaching down. Ray rolls his eyes but jogs forward and gets just enough height to grab Ryan’s hand, the two of them sharing the burden of getting him onto the roof. “Down there,” Ryan continues idly, “cut across the alley, go through the sewers for maybe ten minutes, and we’ll be right in front of the slaughterhouse again.”

“Nice.” Ray nods, trying to forget how lovingly Ryan’s mouth curved around the syllables of _dangerous_. “Love to crawl through the fucking sewers with you.”

“Done it before,” Ryan points out. “Probably going to do it again.”

Shit. Checkmate there.

\---

In the sewers, everything stinking of damp and rot around them, Ray makes a decision.

He’s been thinking about it since he woke up this morning, his dreams marred and broken apart. More specifically, he’s been thinking about what Michael said - about folk charms and the things they can attract. “Ryan,” he says soft and hoarse, standing next to a slow river of sludge and grime and something that might, once upon a time, have been clear water.

Ryan stops and turns to face him. “Yeah?”

Ray’s fingers dig into his pocket, closing around the charm. Soothing again, ridges and bits of sharp metal digging into his palm in all the familiar places. “That thing you gave me a while back - after that first heist, the charm - does it do something? You never really —”

“Nothing that’ll affect you,” Ryan replies.

Apparently he’s feeling cryptic today.

Ray is not. He’s feeling none of it at all. “Do you want it back?’ he asks, trying to phrase it as an offer rather than a rejection.

“Not really.” Ryan tilts his head. “What’s going on?”

Ray squares his stance and his jaw all at once, straightening his back. Ryan notes it, crossing his arms slowly in front of him as in preparation. Ray yanks the thing out of his pocket, his grip white-knuckled around it. “Look,” he says with as much strength as he can muster, “it’s just - shit’s been getting weird since you handed this thing to me. And I don’t know if it’s the thing’s fault, or if I’m just overreacting, but I’d kind of like to get a full night’s sleep sometime before the next heist.”

Ryan looks between him and the charm for a moment. “What’re you dreaming about?”

Did he fucking _know_ that the charm was going to cause all those dreams? It would be so perfectly fucking _Ryan_ to try and use some magic to get into Ray’s nightmares, to have a little heart-to-heart with his fears until he can dig the truth out of them. Hell, Ryan doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised. At the same time, he isn’t reaching out to take it. Ray extends his arm slightly more, forcing the situation to become even more uncomfortable. “Not your business,” he snaps.

“The charm’s not fucking up your dreams, Ray,” Ryan says patiently. “It’s got nothing to do with that. Don’t believe me if you want, but if I take it, it’s not going to get better. So tell me what you’re dreaming about.”

“Things,” says Ray as blandly as possible. “Past stuff.”

“In Karnaca.”

“Where the fuck else.”

“You know everyone in the dream?”

It’s a fucking interrogation in a sewer that reeks of shit and death, and Ray’s patience is beginning to slip again. “Yes, Ryan. I know _exactly_ who is in all of my fucking nightmares, so why don’t you answer one of my questions here and tell me why you’re so interested?”

Ryan looks at him for a long moment. His expression is utterly unreadable. “Sometimes things, or even people, crawl in through the cracks in this city,” he says evenly. “It’s hard to explain. Dreams make it easier for them. It’s - It’s easy to exploit, you understand. I could probably do it if I really wanted to. And there are certain things - certain people - that I would rather keep you from meeting.”

“Why?” Ray asks flatly.

Ryan visibly swallows. “People change when they meet the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

Ray stares at him for a long moment, trying to parse the words together. There’s something wrong about the way he’s talking, the way he keeps switching between _things_ and _people_. He makes a decision and pulls his hand back, slipping the charm back into his coat. “Okay. I get it, I think. So what do I look for?”

“Anything odd.” Ryan’s pacing a little closer. Ray knows paranoia when he sees it. He lives and breathes the stuff, after all, and the way Ryan’s looking less like a hungry animal and more _cornered_ is familiar. “I mean - my kind of odd. Disappearing and reappearing, following you, shit like that. It’s really only going to happen in dreams. You’re not marked or anything, the connection’s so fucking limited —”

“Ryan,” Ray says slowly, “is this fucking charm supposed to be _stopping_ bad shit on your level from getting near me?”

“Not stopping,” Ryan corrects, ever exact. “Deterring, yes. That’s the best we can hope for.”

“You’re worried.” In terms of powerful people that Ray’s met - and not powerful in an ethereal way like politicians or bankers, but _real_ power - Ryan has previously been at the top. But the _worry_ in Ryan’s tone makes Ray wonder if he’s had it all wrong - if really, Ryan’s just lurking somewhere in the middle of a hierarchy so tall that most of it’s obscured from view. “You’ve been worried since the beginning —”

“Of course!” Ryan snarls, running a hand through his hair enough to drag some of the strands into a tangled mess. “Of course I’m fucking _worried_ , Ray. You don’t trust me enough to listen if I tell you to be scared of something, you act like I’m the worst person you’ve ever met when you don’t even _know_ half of the things I know, about what’s out there right now.”

“Then _tell me_!” Ray’s voice bounces up and down the canal.

The two of them freeze until the echo fades a little. “Then fucking tell me,” Ray says again, softer and nearly shaking.

A part of him almost understands what it must be like for Ryan when Ray holds his past locked so deep inside of him that it becomes nebulous and dark.

Ryan’s nearly shaking. “I can’t.” Before Ray can snap something else, Ryan continues, his voice slowing and trying to settle again. “I can’t tell you. I can show you. Tonight. But you’ll need to trust me, and do exactly what I tell you. There’s a chance something could go very fucking wrong. You understand that?”

The two of them are abruptly very close together - Ryan away and then close again, instant. When his hand closes around Ray’s jaw, forcing them to look at each other, it’s nothing like it was on the rooftop. His grip is brutally harsh, fingers digging in hard against the jawbone. Ray can feel a joint creak underneath his skin.

“Tell me you understand,” Ryan says.

Ray looks him right in the eyes. “Okay. I still don’t trust you, but I don’t think you’re going to fuck me over here. And I want to try and understand whatever you’re so worried about, to protect myself here. So - if you’re willing to give me this, then I can maybe try to explain some of the shit that happened in Karnaca.”

Ryan pauses. He smiles, slow and careful. “Isn’t eye for an eye my thing usually?”

Ray shrugs, fingers twisting in the heavy fabric of his coat. “You’re not always wrong. Only most of the time, or whatever.”

The two of them watch each other. After a moment, Ryan inclines his head for a moment and lets go of Ray's jaw. Then he turns to continue through the sewer. Ray lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding, his lungs aching with the force of the exhale.

Ryan doesn’t say anything else until they’re out of the sewers, him grabbing Ray’s hand to help pull him out of the depths of Dunwall’s underground. He pauses once Ray’s out in the dimming light, his legs still hanging in the opening. “Just sleep like normal tonight. I’ll get you over there.”

Ray licks his lips. “Where’s  _there_?”

Something immeasurably fond crosses over Ryan’s features at the question, as if he thinks it’s _funny_. “Hard to explain. Put it like this: I couldn’t point it out to you on a map. But I think, maybe, everyone’s been there at least once in their dreams, or at least their nightmares. Things fracture there. People fracture. It doesn’t even have a name, but every single person the Outsider’s touched knows what it is.”

“... So how do you get back?” Ray’s still sitting on the Dunwall street, too engrossed to move. He does draw his legs out of the sewer so that Ryan can slide the cover back on, pulling his knees tight against his chest. It’s the kind of thing he used to do when his mother would tell him stories, him curled up in bed and unable to sleep while she told him old stories.

Ryan’s smile is both beautiful and unimaginably cruel. “There’s a few ways, some worse than others. We’ll be taking the easy way out, I hope.”

“Ryan.” Ray’s tone is deadly serious. “What the _fuck_ is the hard way out?”

Ryan shakes his head and places a finger over Ray’s lips. The contact is just enough to shut Ray up, and then Ryan pulls his hand back again. “Again: hard to explain. You have to see it. So just go to sleep. I’m sure Jack’s got something if you’re worried you’ll be too tense to fall asleep.”

Ray rubs the back of his neck. “Fine,” he agrees.

Too late to back now. Ray is many things, but he isn’t a coward when it comes to things like this.

He’s absolutely sure he’s seen worse.

\---

That night, Jack gives him something mixed into some frankly disgusting herbal tea that’s supposed to knock him right out. He gives Ray an appraising look as he stirs it. “Haven’t been sleeping well?” It’s not exactly a lie, so Ray nods and makes a special effort to look exhausted instead of half-terrified.

Jack sets the spoon off to the side. “This should knock you out. Can’t keep taking it every night, though, so hopefully a good night of sleep sets you straight.”

“I hope so too,” Ray croaks, reaching out to take the mug.

Jack hands it to him and watches him for a moment. “Just bring it with all the other dishes after breakfast tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Ray agrees.

Jack pauses in the doorway. Michael and Gavin aren’t asleep yet, too busy playing some new dice game Gavin picked up out on the docks, so Ray’s alone in here for now. “Night,” the older man offers.

“Night, Jack.” Ray’s voice rattles around uncomfortably in his throat. He takes the first sip of tea. His entire face must tense up at the taste, because Jack laughs softly to himself before walking back to the main room.

He leaves the empty mug on the table next to his bed and lays back, watching the whale oil in the next room throw strange blue lights across the ceiling, creating dozens of unknowable shifting patterns in the dark. The light sound of conversation and clattering from the next room, it seems, is just soothing enough.

\---

When Ray opens his eyes, he’s falling.


	9. the other side of the machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, stealing this opening scene from a bit in dishonored 2: it's okay, it's fine, this works very well.
> 
> also: works in progress include the next few chapters of this and a new modern fake ah... thing that is very dark and odd and i doubt will be very popular, but as this fic proves, i'm basically allergic to writing popular fic.

It takes about two seconds for Ray’s brain to figure out if he’s even upright, some part of his brain whirling to figure out up from down. It’s a little more difficult when everything’s grey. Then actual panic sets in and he starts yelling, flailing out as inelegantly as possible to latch onto _anything_ at all. He really didn’t think Ryan would throw him right into a fucking death trap, that there’d be some foreplay first, so to speak, because Ryan’s obviously the type to toy with his food.

But apparently that trust was misplaced as hell.

Something flashes at the bottom corner of his vision - a ledge, maybe, something impossibly broken apart (cobblestones, rock visible underneath - where _is_ this?) and Ray flails out towards it.

A hand closes itself around his wrist, grip like iron, and Ray goes from falling to dangling over an impossible void, perfectly caught in Ryan’s grip. Ray knows that his shoulder should pop out of its socket with the sudden impact and shift, but impossibly, his body holds itself together.

“Fucking,” Ray says, gasping for air, “fuck me —”

“Sorry.” Ryan pulls him back over the edge and lets him stand on the patch of ground for a moment. Ray staggers, his legs weak and his knees on the edge of giving out. He’s still breathing too quickly, so he starts trying to count seconds, a trick he hasn’t had to think about in years. “Thought I had brought you in closer, but I guess not.”

Ray finally looks up at Ryan and catches sight of a smile. “You’re fucking smiling,” he snaps, jabbing a finger towards Ryan’s unfairly pretty face, still striking even in the odd grey light all around them. “It’s not - It’s not funny, asshole. I thought I was going to fucking die here.”

Wherever _here_ is.

Ray actually glances around for the first time and stops. It’s like they’re in fog - but fog stretching onwards forever, without a streetlamp or a building in sight to break up the monotony. What does exist is chunks of land, like something ripped them up from the ground and left them to float here, unattached and free. It looks like pieces of Dunwall - a streetlamp here, crooked and bent, a half-crumbled fountain there, cobblestones still wet with rainwater.

In the distance sits half of a building, perched precariously close to the edge of a precipice.

“What is this?” he finally asks, his voice thick and low with confusion.

Ryan chuckles, glancing around. “Let’s see. Dunwall, obviously. And if that building over there’s any indication, it’s, oh, a good fifteen or so years ago.”

Ray bites down on his lip. The air is tasteless here. There isn’t even a _smell_. Everything exists. He can feel the ground beneath his shoes, but the sensation stops there. “You’re not answering my question.” Ryan is answering one half of the question, yes, but he’s skirting around the important half here.

Ryan walks over to the edge of the piece of rock they’re on and peers over the edge. He beckons Ray closer. There’s a series of smaller pieces a little below, arranged randomly but generally towards the building. “I told you it doesn’t have a name.” He drops down below, landing almost too softly. Ray follows, the impact traveling up his ankles. He staggers a step or two and Ryan throws out an arm to keep him from almost falling off into the gap below.

He still feels sick after that fall. Or maybe it’s just that wrongness in the air making nausea climb up his throat again and again.

“I don’t even know what it is, really. It’s the Outsider’s - place, I guess. I think it reflects pieces of whoever’s in it. I’ve thought a lot about it - whether or not it’s a physical space, I mean.” Ryan’s voice is contemplative. “I don’t mean really _physical_. It’s obviously not. It’s a dreamspace. But I’m not sure whether it just exists differently depending on who’s featured in it, so to speak  - like mine would be different from yours, for example - or if it’s just an enormous singular _space_ where everyone has their own corner, where if we drift a hundred miles in that direction we’d run into Geoff’s dreams or Gavin’s —”

“Ryan,” Ray interrupts wearily, “that’s cool as hell and I definitely understand, but can we please get to _why_ you wanted to show me this?” He doesn’t understand at all, but he’s really not on board for Ryan’s esoteric thoughts about what this place is.

“Just wait,” Ryan tells him as they begin the climb up towards the ruined building.

They don’t talk again until they’re at the base of the building. Ryan is looking up at the second or third floor, his head tilted back. Ray follows him, silent and small in the enormous silence of the space. Sound doesn’t echo. It took him a while to understand exactly what was so odd about their footsteps, but it’s like the sound starts and then cuts off mere seconds after it begins.

He listens to the deadened noise as they climb up a half-ruined set of stairs.

At first, he thinks the third door down the hall is blown open because half the building’s gone anyway.

Then Ryan turns inside, Ray following. And Ray realizes that he was completely wrong.

The scene inside is _frozen_ , eerily so. Two men in the doorway - Overseers, identifiable even from behind from the uniforms and the straps keeping their masks on. Ryan has already settled on the couch in the corner, his left foot up on his right knee, him tapping away some strange rhythm on his knee. Then he gestures widely. “Look around.”

Ray, trapped in the doorway, swallows and tastes something unimaginably sour in his throat.

He slowly circles around the Overseers. They are still. They are eerily still, statues. One of them has his sword out. The other is knocked backwards. Ray doesn’t see why until he makes it all the way around. Arterial spray sits frozen in the air, droplets scattered from the man’s throat. He can see the bullet hole in the man’s throat, can _see_ the metal of the bullet in the wound, drilling through skin and flesh.

Suddenly, Ray knows exactly what he’s looking at.

He swivels to the right, following the path of the bullet. An old pistol sits in the grip of a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen.

His bright blue eyes are the most familiar thing in the world - Ryan’s own, trapped in the strange confines of a younger face.

“What the fuck?” Ray breathes.

He can feel Ryan’s - the older Ryan, the one he knows - eyes on him.

There is something nearly artistic about the blood caught in the air. He reaches up despite himself, his thumb brushing along one of the tiny crimson dots, glittering in the light.

Then he draws back instantly. The blood’s _wet_ underneath his touch, and he can see the stain on the pad of his thumb. Ray immediately scrubs it off on his sleeve, disgust rising up sharp and pure in his gut. Blood usually isn’t a problem - but this is blood from a crime over a decade old, so personal and important to the man on the other side of the room that it sits here and festers, and there’s something innately wrong about touching it.

“There’s two reasons,” Ryan says quietly from the corner, his voice so soft that it nearly makes Ray jump, “that I want to protect you from anything - or anyone - that might come through here. It makes you vulnerable. This is a vulnerable moment of mine, Ray. And I see how aggressively you protect your past. I assume you wouldn’t want anyone digging into it without your permission.”

“Um.” Ray shoves his hands into his pockets. “Thank you, I guess.” It feels odd until he realizes that the charm isn’t there. He balls his hands into fists instead, pressing his knuckles against the bottom of his pockets hard enough to strain the seams.

“And this,” Ryan continues, ignoring his words altogether, “is the other reason why.”

He straightens, the motion utterly fluid, and yanks the pistol from his belt. Ryan levels it at his younger self and pulls back on the hammer, a mere trigger press from putting a bullet in the head of his younger self.

“Ryan!” Ray snaps, almost staggering forward a step or two to try and grab the gun.

Ryan, however, seems more interested in focusing on his aim. “What do you think happens if I pull the trigger?” he asks. At first Ray thinks it’s rhetorical - but then Ryan actually looks over at him with a tilt of the head.

Ray opens and closes his mouth. Eventually his thoughts coalesce into a sentence. “Fuck, Ryan, I don’t know - I mean, is it even _real_? Like, if it’s just a memory or something, you can’t rewrite what happened or anything - right?” He’s fumbling around with what little he knows, trying to fit pieces together. He stares desperately at Ryan, hoping that his answer is good enough for him.

Ryan’s finger twitches on the trigger. Ray flinches back on instinct, as if the bullet is going to somehow curve and hit him.

Then the man laughs, the sound more caustic than cheerful, and pulls the gun back. “Your guess is as good as mine, Ray. For all we know, nothing could happen - or, maybe, if someone changes the way you remember that crucial moment in your life - well, you wake up a different person, right?”

Ray thinks about the wetness and warmth of the blood against his fingertips, freshly spilled and caught in tiny droplets.

Ryan slides the gun back into its holster. “And I happen to like you as you are,” he says with absolute earnestness, “keeping secrets or not.”

Ray nods slowly, unwilling to risk speaking yet.

Ryan circles around back towards the door, beckoning for him to follow like nothing at all happened. “C’mon. Let’s go up to the roof. I used to like it up there.”

But Ray pauses halfway through the doorway, glancing back. Despite the Ryan trapped in that moment being so much younger, his left hand still unmarked, there’s that same familiar steel in his gaze, his body absolutely sure of its motions. They were two very different people back then. Ray can imagine himself at the same moment in time wriggling into a sewer to avoid a guard, clutching some scraps of food to his chest, thinking _don’t eat tonight and you fucking die_. None of that steel. Sure of nothing whatsoever.

Yet they have converged in the same place. Maybe there weren’t differences after all, in the end.

They were both trying to survive, each in their own desperate ways.

\---

The roof provides an excellent view of nothing as far as the eye can see. Ryan settles on the edge and Ray sits down next to him. Finally, Ray forces himself to talk, his voice hoarse with something that is definitely not fear - even if it is. “Not as nice as you remember, huh?”

It’s a shitty joke, but it makes Ryan chuckle. “No,” he agrees. “Turns out a lot of the appeal was the view - and there’s not much to look at up here.”

Ray tries again, reestablishing normalcy with his voice. “If you had told me your brain was mostly fog and shit, I wouldn’t have bothered. Could have walked outside tomorrow morning, pointed up at the sky, and gone _yeah, it’s like that_. Totally the same effect.” Ryan laughs again, a little harder this time, covering his eyes for a moment with his hand. Ray’s noticed that he does that when he thinks something is funnier than it actually is, like he’s embarrassed at how much he likes it.

He does that a lot at Ray’s jokes. Personally, Ray exists in perfect awareness that he is the absolute master of comedy here, so he doesn’t get why Ryan has to be embarrassed. But even an embarrassed laugh is better than none at all.

He leans back for a moment, swinging his legs back and forth. It’s odd to be able to look as far as he can here without something in the way. It reminds him of looking out at the ocean sometimes, that expanse so enormous that distance seems inconceivable.

Something catches his eye - a flicker of movement, exceptionally out of place here more than anywhere else. Ray’s eyes snap towards it and he blinks, trying to pick it out of the various pieces of ground.

Gone. Then - there. Gone again. And then again, closer.

Ray shades his eyes on reflex to try and cut out any extra light and squints.

It’s a man. A man _walking_ , no less, in what is supposed to be Ryan’s special private dreamspace or whatever. Ray elbows Ryan hard in the ribs. “Hey. There’s someone over there.”

Ryan blinks, still peering out towards the endless expanse. “Who?”

“Fuck if I know.” Ray leans a little forward and scoots towards the corner of the building to get a closer look. “Maybe a little under six feet. Dressed just like - a guy, I guess. Dark hair.”

Ryan looks up. Something twitches in his jaw. “What color are his eyes?”

The man turns and looks right up at Ray, somehow aware despite the enormous distance between them, and Ray freezes. He knows that look. He knows those eyes, flat and dark with nothing inside of them. “It’s that guy,” he hisses before he can think about what he’s saying, starting to scramble to his feet.

“What guy?” Ryan follows him in standing up, one hand settling on his sword.

“The black-eyed fucker,” Ray answers, his mouth moving too quickly for him to realize that he _hasn’t told Ryan yet_ , has never mentioned the specter following him around and making chance appearances on street corners and in darkened doorways. He glances back at Ryan just in time to see the man’s entire demeanor change.

It goes from friendly and loose to so tense that Ray can see the tendons tighten in his neck. “You’ve seen him before?”

It’s too late to fucking lie now. “Yeah.” Ray swallows. “I just figured it was - you know, some lack of sleep and shit. My brain gets weird when I haven’t been taking care of myself —”

“You didn’t _tell me_?”

Ray was wrong with all the previous times he thought Ryan was angry at him. This is Ryan _furious_ , stalking forward soft and deliberate to cross the distance Ray’s instinctively created between them. Ray teeters on the corner of the building, glancing back towards the figure that is very definitely taking its sweet time moving through the wreckage towards them. Ryan’s fingers curl against his collar, lifting him a good three inches off the ground.

Ray’s first instinct is to kick. But if he kicks Ryan and the man throws him away, he’s going to plummet a good six stories down into nothingness. So he freezes, hand automatically going up to grab Ryan’s wrist. Hopefully he can catch onto it when the man holding him up inevitably tries to drop him to his abrupt death.

Ryan, meanwhile, is seething. “You didn’t _think_ to fucking _inform me_ that you were seeing the fucking Outsider for - how long, Ray?”

“A few weeks, maybe,” Ray squawks out. “Ryan, look, I didn’t think it was a big deal - and isn’t the Outsider a fucking god? Why’s he look like, you know, just a guy?”

“No wonder he got here so fast,” Ryan mutters to himself. “No wonder, if he’s already onto you, of course he’d know.” Ryan’s syllables are more spit than voice, sharp and stabbing. His voice curls up at the last sentence, like he wants to drive a knife somewhere inside Ray’s gut but is making do with sentences instead. “And what did you _think_ he’d be dressed up as, Ray? Did you think black eyes were just a fun detail? Fucking Karnaca, teaching all their stupid little gutter rats that the Outsider levels towns and collapses empires, as if we don’t do that ourselves, as if he’s not just providing the fucking fulcrum —”

Ray gathers all the strength he can to make his voice steady. It takes even more of his willpower to ignore the utter fury in Ryan’s voice as he calls him a fucking _gutter rat_ , like all the guards used to snarl before a well-aimed kick. Normally Ray would start swinging at anyone who used that term. Normally, however, he wouldn’t be dangling over an unknowable abyss, kept safe by Ryan’s sure grip and nothing else. “Ryan. I’m sorry, okay? I’m not used to dealing with all of this.”

Ryan stares at him for a few long moments.

“No,” he says slowly, his tone equalizing itself all over again. By the next sentence, he sounds perfectly like himself again, calm and practiced. “No, you aren’t.” He glances behind him for a moment furtively, and then he squares his shoulders a little. “We need to get you out of here. You trust me?”

Ray nods furiously, his chin bumping against Ryan’s wrist. He doesn’t trust Ryan, but he trusts Ryan with this one thing - because he doesn’t have anyone else even remotely on his side here.

“Alright,” Ryan says. The mark on the back of his left hand flares up, burning bright yellow against his skin. “We still need to talk. You meet me at noon tomorrow. East side of the Rumfare Canal, right at the end, facing the sea. Got it?”

“Got it,” Ray croaks. The words are pretty much drilled into his brain with the way panic is sharpening all of his senses down to perfect points.

Ryan glances over his shoulder again, just once. “Good.” The mark on his hand is brighter than ever now, glowing white-hot. “Remember - just trust me.”

Ray opens his mouth to form the syllables of  _okay._ Ryan's feet move apart slightly, as if needing to support his weight.

Then he hurls Ray off the roof.

He sees the building hurtling past, sees the ground rushing towards him, and prepares for the sickening thunk of impact.

\---

Ray jerks awake, kicking the blanket off of him in his haste as he goes from laying down to completely upright in mere moments. He staggers up and out of bed, catching himself against the doorway. The world spins sickeningly around him, vertigo making his vision turn and lurch. He leans over for a moment, staring down at the ground furiously, thinking _stable, you’re stable_.

“Look who’s up fucking early,” Michael crows off to the side. “It’s before ten, Ray, what’s up —”

Ray staggers over to the toilet and throws up mostly stomach acid, making it just in time as his knees slam against the ground.

He rests his head against the seat for a moment, coughing a little and retching a few more times. After a moment he closes his eyes, trying to piece together everything he can remember. Normally he’s not one to remember dreams. Last night wasn’t a dream. It was something in between that and a real experience, and he can recall every second of it perfectly. _We need to talk_ swims around his brain in Ryan’s rich baritone and Ray groans, wishing he could just throw up all over again.

Michael peers into the bathroom through the open door, his curly mop of hair just visible at the fuzzy corners of Ray’s vision. “Uh - you good, man? I know you took some of Jack’s herbal shit, so I get if that didn’t agree with you. Shit’s gross.”

There’s quick footsteps, the rhythm pounding at the back of Ray’s skull furiously. “Ray?” It’s Gavin’s voice, thin and wavering. “I got you some water.”

“Shit,” Ray spits, his voice scratchy. “Gavin, just - fucking leave it out there on the table. I’ll grab it in a second.” He inhales before remembering himself even slightly. “Thanks.” His throat burns and aches with the acid.

He shuts his eyes again as he hears Michael quietly convince Gavin to leave him alone.

\---

When he gets geared up three hours later, picking up his crossbow, he slides an extra knife onto his belt. There’s no good reason for it. Ray doesn’t think Ryan’s going to kill him. He’s learned better. But he isn’t sure what, exactly, Ryan wants from him today either.

On the walk to the canal, Ray tugs the charm out of his pocket in an alley out of sight. Then he stops. The thing’s cracked right down the middle, a nasty scar along its metal center, the line extending along one of the ends.

He runs a thumb along the damage slowly, feeling torn edges digging in against his skin.


	10. a strictly-decorative deadbolt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took me a little longer, but I've been writing the next two chapters consecutively, so hopefully they'll get done faster! Progress after the next chapter may be slower in order to give me time to work on the second chapter of the other in-progress work I've got going, but hopefully not by too much.

He arrives twenty minutes early at the canal - which is good, because Ryan arrives fifteen minutes early. Ray sits on the edge of the canal and concerns himself with skipping rocks for a while, kicking his feet and listening to the heels of his boots slam up against the canal wall. He doesn’t look up even as a familiar person settles next to him. He stares down at Ryan’s boots for a moment, trying to figure out how to even begin to talk.

“Are you okay?” Ray finally asks, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

Ryan chuckles. He sounds exhausted. “Yeah. I’m fine. What about you?”

Ray pauses for a moment. “I feel great, actually.”

He feels Ryan’s eyes on him - and even if he can’t see the man’s expression, he can hear the skepticism in his voice. “Really?”

Ray laughs a little, the sound wry and dark. “Fuck no. I threw up after I got up and felt like I was going to pass out for most of the morning.”

“Sorry.” Ryan sounds genuinely apologetic this time. “That’s not how I wanted you to wake up - but falling seems to trigger that reaction faster than any other method.”

The silence sits between them. A few people wander by, one of them tossing a cigar off to the side and into the canal. Ray watches it go out and sink beneath the surface.

Ryan glances around for a moment, his look pensive. “We shouldn’t talk out here. Overseers like to wander through here on some of their routes. We can go back to my place.”

“Your place?” Ray repeats, scrambling to his feet to try and keep up with Ryan’s sudden movement. Out of all the things he was expecting today, he wasn’t expecting this. Ryan has a _place_ , obviously, since he has to have been sleeping somewhere all this time, but Ray figured the only reason he’d be going there is if Ryan needed somewhere to dismember his corpse before dumping it.

But it seems it’s a place he’s going to see before he’s a dead body. How lucky.

Ryan leads him down a small alley, one so narrow that it must have once been wider before one of the buildings on either side was expanded. He pauses at the other end and glances around before turning to the right. Ray, meanwhile, is noting the path they’re taking. If he has to run, he wants to be able to replicate it personally. It’s four feet from the mouth of the alley to the canal if he has to swim for his life all over again.

The building Ryan stops in front of is low and squat, a single floor that probably used to be someone’s home before the slaughterhouses and harbor spread towards this end of the city. It looks abandoned. There’s wood boarding up most of the windows. The foundation itself is worn at the edges, stone walls cracked and ancient.

Ryan disappears on the spot and Ray glances around, looking up in time to see Ryan reach over the edge and offer a hand.

He ends up having to kick off the wall to reach him, pushing himself further up enough to grab Ryan’s wrist. Ryan’s hand wraps around his wrist in return. “No easy entrance?” Ray grumbles, brushing off his pants as he straightens on the rooftop.

Ryan shrugs. “Didn’t think I was going to be inviting anyone over anytime soon. So pardon the mess.”

He leans down and moves what looks like some repurposed sailcloth off to the side. It’s obviously heavy, though, which makes Ray squint down at it. The draw of this strange makeshift entrance draws his attention away. Through the hole, Ray can make out some objects on the floor below, obscured by darkness - square and squat, maybe boxes of some kind. He blinks as Ryan gestures towards the hole. “You first,” he says.

Ray pauses for a moment. Last chance to turn back.

Then he sits down on the edge of the hole and drops into the lion’s den.

\---

Two seconds after landing, Ray moves a step or two forward and runs right into something in the dark. It bangs up against his shin and he spits out a curse.

“You okay?” Ryan’s peering through the gap, seemingly amused.

Ray gives him a thumbs up before realizing that Ryan may not be able to see him. “Yeah. I’m good.”

His eyes have adjusted a little by the time Ryan drops into the room. His boots thunk down hard against what must be a concrete floor. Ray squints and watches as Ryan tugs something out of his pocket. A match flares up brightly, and Ray stands still as the other man paces around the room, lighting up candles. It’s old-fashioned - but probably safer than having to get whale oil in here.

Even a short drop can set off a cracked canister in a massive explosion. Ray’s seen it during heists.

Ray points up at the obvious opening in the ceiling. “How’re you —” he begins, but before he can continue, Ryan reaches over and picks up what looks like a fishing hook attached to the end of a wooden pole. Ray looks up, getting a good look at the cover. It takes him a moment to realize exactly what he’s looking at.

It’s a fucking grate - like one of the ones on a cooling unit - with sailcloth pulled over it to make it look less out of place and provide actual cover.

He watches as Ryan gently moves the hook over one of the bars of the grate to tug the cover back into place.

It’s a kind of ingenious way to keep the place looking abandoned and have an entrance that’s difficult to find.

Ray hates how smart the guy is sometimes. No wonder he’s caught him and Jack talking softly over schematics once or twice. Ryan gives him a smirk at the same time - _see, I’m fucking clever_ in everything but words.

The mess that Ryan was talking about is mostly books. It takes Ray a second to put everything together - because the space is incredibly lived in despite the abandoned look on the exterior. There’s a couch in the corner, old and worn, with stacks of books scattered around it. That’s certainly a pattern - Ryan really, really likes books.

Ray turns slowly on the spot.

There’s a workbench shoved into a corner, with an arrangement of weapons scattered on top. Some of them are ones Ray’s seen Ryan with before - but some he’s never seen before in his entire life. Shelves sit in the corner with what must be a variety of food, mostly in closed boxes. He can see the rat traps set up on the floor nearby.

The room, in fact, is really just one large room minus some wooden dividers. He expected more proper walls from the look on the outside, but the one wall that seems to have existed is mostly destroyed in the middle of the space.

This means that, from this angle, he gets a perfect view of Ryan’s frankly disgustingly large bed. There are some wooden pallets up, sure, but they mostly seem like informal delineations. For a moment, Ray struggles. He honestly clenches his hands into fists and digs his nails into his palms to try and stop himself. But the words burst out of him anyway. “Okay. One question. Why do you have a fucking _giant bed_ , Ryan? How many people have you had in this thing at once?”

Ryan stares at him for a moment, hands caught in the process of taking his jacket off. “One? Me? Two, at most?”

Were the world a just place, Ray’s jaw would be touching the floor. “So you have a giant bed, cool superpowers, you’re not terrible to look at or anything, and you haven’t had at least _one_ orgy?”

“No?” Ryan seems legitimately baffled by the suggestion.

Ray mumbles _fucking idiot_ to himself and leans down to unlace his boots, kicking them off once they’re loose enough. The conversation’s probably going to take a while, if he had to guess. Ryan sheds his coat and begins the process of taking off the many weapons attached to him underneath the heavy material. It’s about the most dressed down they’ve ever gotten around each other.

“You know, first I’m pretty,” Ryan muses, “and now I’m not terrible to look at? Ray. That’s a massive downgrade. Frankly, I’m _hurt_.”

Ray’s mouth is still moving without his brain, as his brain’s interested in picking up all the minute details in the room - and checking for escape routes. “Yeah, well, I’m personally hurt every day by looking at you, so join the fucking club, buddy.”

Ryan mumbles something annoyed to himself as Ray wanders around, running his fingers over things. Ryan has an affinity for heavy fabrics and dark colors that goes beyond his terrifying persona. Noted.

On a whim, he plucks a book off of one of the stacks and examines it in the candlelight. Never seen it before in his life. No idea what it’s about. The cover’s a vague landscape shot that doesn’t offer much help. But when he flips through it, Ray slows. Then he picks up two other books, just to be sure.

They’re plays.

Ray’s jaw works for a moment. “You like plays?”

“Yes,” Ryan says primly. He seems ready to be offended on behalf of theater as a whole.

“Wow,” Ray replies flatly, because what the hell else do you say?

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Now, if you’re done digging through all of my shit right in front of me - we can talk.” He sits on the couch, the thing creaking a little under his weight.

“You sure that thing’s going to support both of us without breaking in half?” Ray asks. It’s a viable question.

Ryan chuckles as he goes about lighting a cigar, setting the thing between his teeth and shaking out the match. “If you’re so worried,” he says after a long inhale, “you can stand. I don’t care either way.” He plucks the cigar from his mouth and exhales slowly, smoke spiraling into the air between them. After a moment of glancing around the room, Ray awkwardly perches on the opposite end of the couch, as far away from Ryan as he can personally muster.

The hunk of furniture groans, but it holds.

The two of them are silent for a moment. Ray fidgets with his pockets before tugging off his coat.

Ryan exhales again. Cigar smoking hasn’t exactly been one of Ray’s _things_ before this, but it’s the closest Ryan ever gets to relaxed, his eyes sliding shut for a moment and the cigar dangling lazily from his fingers. Ryan’s voice, low and rumbling, is almost soothing in the quiet. “I’m sorry for some of the things I said. Calling you a gutter rat, specifically. That was - uncalled for.”

Ray shrugs stiffly. “Not wrong.” He wishes he had something to do with his hands, toying instead with the buttons on his sleeves. “I _am_ a gutter rat from Karnaca. Would be dumb if I got offended about it.”

Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t like reducing you to that. It was wrong of me. And I’ll admit that.”

Ray has never felt more uncomfortable with an apology in his life. Normally he loves to be vindicated. But this is genuine. It feels like he should be apologizing too, so he tries to formulate something that doesn’t sound like his tongue tripping over itself. “I’m - sorry for not telling you about what I was seeing. I just didn’t - there was a lot going on. It was the last thing I was worried about, with the heists and us arguing and shit and —”

He trails off, fixing his gaze on one of the stones set into the wall on the opposite side of the room. “I forgive you,” Ryan says quietly, letting the moment sit between them.

The crack in the stone reminds him of something. He reaches over and fumbles around with his jacket pockets until he slips the charm out, still scarred down the middle. “I meant to mention this when we were outside, but - I got up this morning and it was - like this?” He hates how small his voice is, but there’s a part of Ray that feels like he’s broken a gift of some kind. There’s this one ring Michael tossed him after their second heist - pure silver, heavy and engraved, stolen from a jewelry shop that happened to be on the way back to the slaughterhouse - and Ray still has it tucked away inside a drawer, secreted away inside a small box.

Ryan nods. “I was expecting that.” He taps out the cigar in an ashtray sitting by his arm - crystal, expensive, and probably stolen. Then he reaches over and takes it, running his fingers over the damage. “Little hard for the charm to hold when the Outsider’s about twenty feet away from you, huh?” He tosses it down next to the ashtray. “Hopefully I’ll be able to get it back to you by tomorrow.”

When he puts the coat back on without the charm, the weight is going to be off. He doesn't know what he'll do without the familiar curves of it against his palm to soothe him, to remind him of something real and someone who is rapidly becoming a source of strange stability in his life. And Ryan's not stable, not at all, but that instability - that unknowable power and past - is becoming, in itself, something stable.

Ray rubs his eyes. “How long have you been living here?” he asks.

Ryan hums to himself. “Six or seven years now, I’d say? It’s a good spot. Had to clean it up a bit - clear out a bunch of debris, get all of the furniture in here - which took a lot of people who were willing to not ask questions.”

Some part of that is jarring - to know Ryan has been living a few blocks away from the slaughterhouse this whole time, as long as Ray’s been there. Maybe they’ve passed by each other before. Maybe Ray’s pointed his crossbow at him from a rooftop and considered, even briefly, the merits of pulling the trigger.

“Question for a question,” Ryan offers from the other end of the couch, nearly playful.

Ray blinks. “Yeah?”

“I can tell you don’t like Dunwall very much.” That’s a fucking understatement. Ray mutters curses at every god he can think of every time he steps in a puddle here, which happens at least three times per week. Ryan’s gaze is fixed on him. “So what do you miss the most from Karnaca?”

It’s such an innocent question in comparison to all the others that Ray nearly lets out a bark of disbelief.

It also brings him up short.

He rubs the back of his neck to give himself a moment to stall. “The sun, maybe. Or the weather. Humid still, but at least it’s warmer.” He sees Ryan’s mouth start to curve into a smile. “I mean - I don’t know. Sometimes I miss stupid shit, like some of the food you can get there, or - there’s this shit that people there smoke instead of tobacco. Called saleove. Hard to get. Can’t grow in Dunwall’s climate, and they only sell it in this refined powder here. Jack uses it in a few of his mixtures.”

“Saleove,” Ryan repeats mildly. “I think I’ve heard of it. Dark red, small leaves, got this bitter smell - right?”

“Yeah.” Ray finally leans back on the couch, eventually bringing his knees up to his chest. “It’s just - Good. Me and a couple of friends of mine used to sneak some from an apothecary’s shipments that used to pass right by the fucking dump we were hiding in. Steal some filter paper from any market, roll it up, and there you go. Used to make things easier. Looser. Things were bad then. The people I was with were pretty bad. But it seemed okay, sometimes.”

Ryan sets the cigar back between his teeth for a moment.

Ray’s body has begun to tilt a little, leaning to one side. He lets his head rest on the arm of the couch.

Ryan stubs out the cigar with a touch more viciousness this time. “Ever thought about going back?”

“To Karnaca?”

Ryan nods.

Ray swallows. “Once or twice. But there’s shit left for me there now. Have I thought about visiting? Sure. I want to go back before I die. That’s about the only part I’m sure of.” There’s a bit of a wry little laugh. “The way I hear it, Jack wants to retire out there in Serkonos - maybe near Karnaca itself, maybe not. Build a house somewhere nice with all of his heist money. Probably drag Geoff to live with him, because - you know Geoff’s never left Dunwall for his own reasons? He did it back when he was in the navy, but the guy has _never_ left the city.”

Ryan shrugs. “I haven’t either. Ended up in Gristol briefly for a few months, but that was years back, and for distinctly unpleasant reasons.”

“Really?” Ryan seems so damn _worldly_ \- but maybe only in Dunwall, where his expertise runs deep and genuine. Ray runs his index finger along a seam in the couch slowly. “I guess if I ever do want to go back, I can wait until Jack moves out there so I have some place to stay.” That’s pragmatic, at least. He buries his face in his hands for a moment, trying to wake himself up. “Fuck. I feel like such shit.”

Ryan pauses for a moment. “You can take my bed,” he offers. The sentence seems strangely clipped, as if he isn’t sure how to approach it. “Might be easier to sleep here than in the slaughterhouse. Definitely quieter without Gavin and Michael yelling at each other all the damn time.” The offer is too casual, as if to try and reassure Ray that there aren’t any strings attached. He glances over at Ryan, trying to pick out any strangeness in his body language, any implication that there’s something wrong.

Nothing.

Ray sucks in air through his clenched teeth. “Are you sure?”

“Ray,” Ryan points out, soft and wry, “have I ever been unsure of a single fucking thing between you and I?”

The way that Ryan manages to make even the most positive of statements sound vaguely creepy is almost impressive. Ray would be even more impressed if it didn’t manage to make him slightly uncomfortable every damn time. This time, though, Ryan seems to be aware of his own self-seriousness - enough to crack a smirk and a wink over at him.

Part of Ray absolutely does want to climb back up through the hole in the ceiling and get back to the slaughterhouse at top speed. But at the same time, he really doesn’t want to answer questions, especially from Geoff, about what he did today.

He just wants to sleep for about four or five hours, a deep and true sleep uninterrupted by dreams or noise. That’s a difficult prospect any time of year in Dunwall.

“Okay,” he says slowly. The couch creaks in relief as he stands. Ray swallows before adding the necessary detail. “I sleep with a gun, just so you know.”

Ryan turns to look at him, as amused as ever. “Ray. Who the fuck _doesn’t_ sleep with a gun around here?”

Damn it all. He doesn’t dare reply with something snarky, considering that Ryan’s doing something incredibly nice for him here.

Ray’s sitting on the edge of the bed, considering the merits of just collapsing face down and seeing if he can fall asleep like that, when Ryan stands and skirts quietly around the thin wooden dividers creating a makeshift wall. “I just want to tell you again that you’ll be safe here. I know that’s odd to say, but I also know you don’t trust me completely. The bone charm was to protect you, carrying you through half the Distillery District was to protect you - all of it.”

Ray stares at him for a moment.

He bites down on his lip as hard as he can. Ryan’s eyes snap to the motion, as they always do. “Is there anything,” Ray asks, picking his words carefully, “that you wouldn’t do for me, Ryan?”

The two of them stare at each other. It’s that moment in the sewers all over again, neither of them willing to raise their voices. Ryan moves closer, just a few steps away from being able to reach out and touch Ray's knees. It changes the dynamic instantly. Ray’s hands clench into fists against the bedsheets. He doesn’t move back. He doesn’t do anything at all, pinned where he is by the intensity of Ryan’s stare.

“I don’t know,” Ryan says quietly. “But I guess we’re going to find out.”

“I guess so.”

Ray’s admittance feels like it’s shifted something between them, a piece slotting slowly into place.

Ryan smiles softly. The darkness and the angle actually just gentles his features, and there’s a moment where Ray wants to reach out and do _something_.

Grab his hand? Kiss him?

Tug him down onto the ridiculously large bed and — what?

Ryan’s eyes rake slowly up and down his body, something between searching and memorizing. “I just want you to know that it’s nice to see you here, Ray. I would say I haven’t thought about you here - in the bed, I mean - before, but then I’d just be a damn liar.”

Then he’s gone, back around those thin pieces of wood.

Ray stares after him, at the place where he almost thinks Ryan _should_ be, and feels his heart do something new and nearly painful in his chest.

Want has never been a familiar emotion to Ray, but now he’s almost sure that he and that particular sickness are more intimate than ever before.


	11. we were careening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double-length chapter! That's partly because it ended up being long, and partly because I may or may not have to take two weeks off of this just to finish the next chapter of "trying to sever the tether". Some other updates: I've finished my outline for this fic, and if I absolutely stick with it (and I generally go longer rather than cutting the outline), this work is going to be twenty chapters. However, I hate commitment and I love adding more plot threads to compliment the rest, so it very well may go a couple chapters over that.
> 
> This chapter features: Ray being stressed, Ryan talking too much, heavy Overseer involvement. But I think you guys are going to like the next chapter especially :)

He discovers some new things when he comes back to the slaughterhouse.

First, Ray’s trusty bed is disgustingly uncomfortable in comparison to Ryan’s bed. It was possibly never even made for human use, and he was just making do with having low standards. He tosses and turns on the old creaky mattress for a good two hours before finally slipping into an uncomfortable sleep. Having to listen to Michael’s snoring across the room surely wasn’t helping, but there’s really only so much a guy can handle.

Second, he learns that Jack has begun to work on a new project for him - an improvement over a random spyglass haphazardly attached to the top of his crossbow. He comes back to a series of perfectly cut lenses glittering in the light on Jack’s workbench, nearly glowing blue under the light.

Ever delicate, Jack hands him a lens wrapped in a cloth. Ray keeps his touch gentle as he lifts the delicate glass towards the light, watching it fracture and fall apart. He hands it back with a soft impressed noise. Jack smiles down at his work. “What I was thinking,” he says, rearranging a few of the lenses, “is that if we can make you a smaller and lighter scope, then we can add more adjustable lenses on it to make it easier for you at long distances. This spyglass thing was always supposed to be temporary.”

He taps the spyglass on top of the crossbow affectionately.

“It was a good solution,” Ray points out. Credit where credit is due here.

Jack’s smile crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Well, I’m glad you think so. But my new plan is to get a few prototypes up for the frame with some window glass in ‘em, and then you can try out a few different ones. Usual wear and tear. See what can survive you climbing up buildings and getting into scrapes, and then I get out that protective coating I painted the spyglass with for the real lenses.”

Ray feels his heart do a different painful thing than it did yesterday, something softer and more familiar. “Sounds good. Thanks, Jack.”

He starts to turn away. A hand settles on his shoulder and Ray blinks, glancing back. “Before you go,” says Jack, “you should know that Geoff wants to talk to you and Ryan. Got some kind of job, but he seemed pretty, uh - cagey about it. So maybe go in expecting some heavy shit or something.”

 _Heavy shit_ can mean anything from a contract on someone they know or Geoff being out of liquor. There is a whole range of possibilities. Ray nods and throws Jack a cautious little smile. When he turns back, he catches sight of Ryan by the main table, adjusting Gavin’s hand around a knife. As he approaches, he realizes exactly what they’re doing.

Ryan frowns and moves Gavin’s arm slightly up, as if mimicking a throw. “Like that. It takes a lot of arm strength to punch through a skull or anything, obviously. I doubt you’re going to be there yet. But if you can just hit someone in the shoulder or in the torso, enough to slow ‘em down - better than nothing, right?”

Gavin frowns down at his own arm. He opens his mouth to see something, and then Ray jabs him hard in the ribs. He squeaks and drops the knife. Ryan catches it perfectly, hand folding around the knife’s hilt, and Ray grins at him over Gavin’s shoulder. “Ray!” Gavin’s very outraged. Ryan chuckles to himself and slides the knife back into his own belt, the motion smooth and casual.

“Sorry,” Ray says. “Got to steal Ryan for a second. Geoff’s got, like, a job or some dumb shit.”

Gavin grumbles. “Can I keep the knife, Ryan?”

“No.” Ryan slips the knife back inside his jacket. “You’ll try throwing it without me and take your own eye out, and Geoff’ll blame me.” He reaches over and ruffles Gavin’s hair, though, which makes the man let out a few indignant noises and slap his hands away. It’s easy to forget, with the way Ryan has been moving around Ray, that Ryan’s been teaching everyone else little things too.

Ray jerks his head towards Geoff’s office. Ryan nods and approaches with Ray only a few steps behind, his hand reaching out to wrap around the dented copper doorknob.

\---

Jack’s assessment was correct.

Geoff looks cagey. The man’s fixed out towards the window when Ray and Ryan shut the door quietly, his hands resting on the table in the back of the room. Tension sits on his shoulders, forcing them upwards in something that looks both unnatural and kind of intimidating. Ryan sits, casual as anything. Ray stays standing, pressing his hands against the top of the other chair.

“I’m not going to bother asking where you two were, because I assume I’m not going to get a straight answer. So let’s get to the point: got a job for you two,” says Geoff. His voice is both sure and somewhat distant. “Don’t like it very much, but you are the best choice at getting it done. So hold all your fucking questions until the end, okay?” He pivots, rubbing his fingers along his mouth slowly. Disgruntled. Not at all happy about what’s going on here. He points at Ray with his free hand, even as his gaze drifts down to some of the papers on the desk. “Especially you.”

“Uh, okay,” Ray agrees. Sure, he talks a lot of shit, but he’s not generally the type to interrupt briefings.

“A former informant,” Geoff begins delicately, “has begun to try and blackmail me. He’s not doing it very fucking well, obviously, but I’d like to take care of this before it snowballs. We’ve got another heist coming down the line in the next few months, and the last thing I need is a fucking Overseer getting in the way —”

“An _Overseer_?” Ray repeats.

He sees Ryan’s hand twitch underneath the table towards him, as if about to try and reach out and stop him.

“Yes,” Geoff grinds out. “An Overseer, Ray. Did you think we were just _happening_ to avoid Overseer patrols on every heist? Getting those last few tallboy parts Jack’s been wanting from the fucking _ether_? Fuck, I didn’t want to fucking tell you this, because I knew you’d get all - you know, about it, but I need you to take care of it. Can’t send anyone else. Michael would just blow up a whole block, and Gavin would talk his way straight into Coldridge, and the guy’s hiding out in the docks with so many of his friends that sending Ryan in alone would be a suicide mission. So I guess it’s got to be you.”

The back of Ryan’s chair creaks as Ray gnaws furiously on his lower lip.

It’s hard to explain exactly why he’s angry - maybe with the way Geoff’s been treating him with kid gloves about this, keeping secrets in order to avoid upsetting him like he’s a child, or the idea that they’ve been working with a fucking Overseer all this time when every single one of the crew knows what that means. And there’s a little new part of him that’s absolutely angry on behalf of Ryan. They are endangering someone without even _knowing_ it. Everyone knows what happens to anyone who even worships the Outsider nowadays.

Burning worshippers of the Outsider isn’t as common here. People joke that it’s harder, in the rain and the sleet and the fog, for a spark to catch. But they torture them, starve them, and try to burn the blasphemy out in a dozen different equally horrible ways.

Ryan’s voice breaks Ray out of his train of thought as it threatens to boil over. “So why am I here, Geoff?”

He can’t help it. His head snaps over to Ryan and his mouth drags itself open in disbelief. No one else knows about Ryan’s relationship with the Abbey. But he forgets, for a second, that he’s the only one privy to what’s underneath Ryan’s gloves.

Thankfully, Geoff, of all people, is the one to stop him from fucking up royally.

“Because,” Geoff interrupts, “someone has to convince Ray to not be a fucking idiot. At the very least, maybe you can distract him from doing something stupid.”

Ryan smiles, slow and mocking. “I’m sure I can.”

“Fuck you,” Ray snaps.

Ryan’s head tilts lazily towards him. The urge to jump to verbal sparring must be hovering on the tip of his tongue.

“Both of you shut the fuck up,” Geoff snarls, papers crinkling on the desk underneath his fingers. “And listen to the shit that I am trying to impart on you both. This guy’s name is Marshall Firland. He’s a paperwork guy, not a single brave bone in his body. So: spineless little shit, but good for info, until now. About my height, dark hair, glasses, so fucking pale that he’s about to turn fluorescent. Got this nasty scar from his eye to his —“

“To his chin,” Ryan interjects. “Right side, deep fucking scar. Nasty is a good word for it. A sailor took a knife to his face during an inspection and tore his cheek wide open.” His voice sounds nearly distant, eyes focused on the window behind Geoff.

Both Geoff and Ray freeze.

“How do you know that?” Geoff’s tone has slowed, his eyes narrowing at Ryan.

Ryan looks at him. “Met the sailor once. Had a job protecting cargo - illegal shit from Serkonos - and me and him had a drink afterwards. Guy liked to tell the story about how he knifed an Overseer, especially a higher-up, and lived.”

Ray, with his own insight,  can read between the lines. No sailor would survive maiming an Overseer. But someone nearly inhuman - but perhaps too young to perfect the killing blow, or accidentally clumsy - might. The boy in Ryan’s memory, for example, young but crystallizing into the man sitting next to him.

Ray swallows. Maybe he’s not the one Geoff had to worry about.

“You hear anything else about this little grimy fuck?” Geoff demands. He’s nearly salivating at the prospect of more information - maybe to reverse the blackmail.

“Not much.” Ryan shrugs. “Sorry, Geoff. If I knew more, I’d let you know. But I’ll - keep Ray on track, so to speak.”

“Good.” Geoff rubs his eyes and collapses back into his chair, legs kicked out underneath his desk. He looks exhausted. This plus preparing for a heist would wear on anyone, and Geoff is the one who has to hold it all together. He gives Ray a look, so dark and serious that Ray can’t help but look back. “Don’t fuck this up. I don’t care if Ryan has to give you a concussion to keep you from doing something stupid.”

“Fucking treating me like Gavin,” Ray grumbles.

Geoff pauses as he stands to open the door for them. His mouth almost moves, but then it closes. It’s that softening of his expression again, everything turning kinder around the edges in a rare moment. “I’m sorry for not telling you, Ray. Think of this as - cleaning up after my mistakes, if that makes you feel any better.”

It doesn’t. Generally, the crew’s mistakes lead to someone getting shot and a whole block of Dunwall crumbling into the sea.

\---

“What did you do to him?”

Ray’s voice echoes horribly in the alley, the sentence punctuated by their footsteps. Ryan’s expression is unknowable behind the mask. For a moment, Ray expects no answer.

Then Ryan starts talking. He doesn’t seem eager to stop.

“He was the second Overseer I went after.” Oh. That explains that look on Ryan’s face in Geoff’s office, somewhere between wistful and strained. “It wasn’t at the docks - he came out of the Golden Cat at two in the morning, drunk and _very_ happy, and I stepped out of an alley and tried to stab him in the back of the head. But he turns at the last second, right - and my knife cuts his cheek wide open.” Ryan’s fingers press against the top of his cheekbone and trace down to his chin. “Blood goes everywhere, he’s screaming and trying to hold his face together - fucking hilarious.”

“Funny,” Ray says faintly, imagining the flaps of skin and fat and tissue ripping apart, blood pouring down to a man’s shoulder.

Ryan stares up at the sky for a moment. “Screaming got a City Guard patrol on my ass, though, so I couldn’t finish it. Never got back around to him. But I heard that rumor - big sailor knifing the brave Marshall Firland in the face on an inspection. Thought it was kind of funny. No Overseer wants to say they were disfigured by a kid while leaving the Golden Cat of all places. Written reprimand for engaging in _debauchery_ at the very best.”

Ray nods. He can imagine that rumor clumsily spreading until it reached Ryan’s ears. “Saving face.”

“What was left of it, anyway,” Ryan chuckles, instantly hitting the punchline to the joke. They’ve gotten good at that - one of them setting up the board and the other lining up the perfect shot. “So I guess it’s fate. Only right that I go along with you to finally finish the job.” He knocks his shoulder gently against Ray’s.

Ray nods. He points up towards the roof. “Up here, I think. I know the warehouse they’re in. Used to know some Bottle Street guys who passed goods through here until the Watch figured them out and they moved further inland.” He tilts his head. “C’mon. Give me a boost up there.”

Ryan looks at him for a moment and then steps forward. Normally Ray would have to take the long way around to get up to the top of this slightly taller warehouse, but then Ryan kneels down and laces his fingers together. Ray takes a deep breath and steps up. It’s hard to trust Ryan with this kind of thing, but the momentum is just enough that he manages to grab onto the edge of the roof and haul himself up. He’s still scrambling up when Ryan appears next to him, feet slamming down hard against the metal rooftop.

The impact never seems to affect him.

The two of them stand there for a moment. Ray brushes some dust and dirt off of his knees, pointing towards the southwest corner of the building as he straightens. “Over there. It’s that low warehouse. Going to be a problem, because I don’t see any windows.”

“Hm.” Ryan steps closer to the corner of the roof. “I don’t see many good sight lines to begin with.”

Ray sighs and sits down on the edge of the roof, letting his legs hang as he swings the crossbow down off of his back. “Neither do I. That’s a problem. We can try and get onto another building, but it’s still lower than everything else in the area - and covered with that stupid fucking overhang on its roof.”

“Give me a second.” Ryan folds his arms and blinks. He doesn’t move for a moment, scanning from one end of the building to the other “I count two at the east entrance, two at the west entrance - one out back taking a piss, I think, and two guys in the far corner there. Sitting at a table, I think. Probably our guy and a friend.”

Ray frowns. “So you can actually see through walls?”

Ryan chuckles. “Not all the time. And it fucks up my ability to see details. I just see - shapes.”

Reducing people to mere shapes. A part of Ray, distracted by this new explanation for things that have been digging at him (Ryan looking down at the floor of the Golden Cat on that one fateful heist, seeing the floor, but seeing something else), wonders if that’s part of why it’s so easy for him to kill. It’s easy when people aren’t people - when they’re shapes. It’s part of why Ray became a sniper. There is a coldness and a distance, both literal and metaphorical, to his work.

He shakes himself out of it. No time for philosophical considerations.

Ryan still sounds mildly contemplative. “We’re going to have to go in loud.”

“Ryan,” Ray says, “that’s the exact opposite of what we should fucking do. There’s - if your count is right - seven Overseers in there. Two of us, and I’m definitely not any good at close combat in comparison to you. These aren’t City Watch guys, Ryan. They’re —”

“They’re nothing to be afraid of,” Ryan replies steadily. “I don’t like that you’re so fucking afraid of the Abbey, Ray. It’s - unnecessary. But we’ve got a job to do. And if you want to sit up here and wait, that’s fine. I’ll take care of it either way. You can come down there with me, or you can provide support from up here.” His voice is perfectly steady as he continues. “I’ll appreciate either one.”

“I’ll stay up here,” Ray says quietly, “until we clear some of them out. I’ll probably just get in the fucking way if I go down there with you.”

“Pragmatic,” Ryan murmurs, straightening. “As always, Ray.”

Then he steps off the roof like it’s nothing and disappears, reappearing a good five feet away from the edge of the roof. Ray grimaces and begins to adjust the spyglass, watching as Ryan yanks out his sword and twirls it casually. There’s something new in his stride - some energy that has never quite been there before. Before, on heists or on smaller assignments, Ryan was almost like a dog pulling on its leash. There’s none of that containment now. It’s been replaced by a horrible electric grace, like someone’s poured quicksilver into his veins.

Again: maybe Ray wasn’t the one Geoff had to fucking worry about.

Almost casually, Ryan pushes the mask up just enough to expose the lower half of his face.

Ray breathes out, slow as he can, and loads a bolt, cranking the string back until the tension is perfect.

Ryan’s whistle cuts through the quiet afternoon.

An Overseer sprints around the corner. The mask glints, some gold reflection of Ryan’s own, and even from this distance, Ray’s makeshift scope is just good enough that he can see Ryan smile.

He can hear, distantly, the Overseer demanding that Ryan identify himself.

Ryan won’t stop grinning. He says something back, too soft for Ray to hear, something that makes the Overseer step back an inch or two - either out of fear or surprise. Then, before Ray can pull the trigger or even line up the perfect shot, Ryan’s gone. Ray yanks his eye back from the spyglass to try and reorient himself, panic welling up in his stomach.

Then the tip of a sword bursts through the Overseer’s gut, followed by the rest of the blade, and Ray remembers his pistol going off and Ryan on the other end - and then Ryan nowhere at all, the bullet gone.

The mask is back down all of a sudden, the skull grinning as the Overseer drops and starts to crawl, his hands pressing against the ragged edges of his gut wound. Ryan almost tilts his head - as if curious about what the man is planning to do - and then yanks the pistol from his belt. The echo of the gunshot bounces between the buildings, and the west entrance to the building flies open.

Ryan looks up at the sound. Ray swings his aim over to the entrance as hard as possible, seeing three Overseers piling out into the alley. He swallows and aims. Back of the head would be best. Overseer masks are metallic, heavy, hard for a bolt to punch through. He exhales and waits. Two of them charge Ryan and one hangs back, pulling a pistol. Ray scrambles a few feet over to the left.

The man’s aim straightens.

Ray exhales, aims, and pulls the trigger in mere moments.

The bolt hits the man in the back of the head. It punctures the skull and there’s a strange moment where he almost reaches up, as if to try and pull the bolt out. Then he staggers another step or two forward and topples.

Ray lowers the scope from his eye just in time to see the other two men also begin to fall. Ryan’s standing there casually, his stance unmoved from when the three men first appeared. Ray blinks and lifts the scope to his eye again, hastily adjusting it.

The same wound - a hole tunneled into the back of the skull, thin and deep - shared between both of them.

When he lowers the crossbow again, nearly confused, he sees Ryan raise his free hand and give a little two-fingered salute in his direction. And Ray remembers rushing around that corner outside the Golden Cat, his breath loud in his ears, and seeing those three City Watch members topple into each other, their necks torn open identically and spurting blood across the cobblestones.

The memory seems like forever ago.

There’s something in his throat - a little rush of power, of petty revenge, of that moment closing one eye and using his thumb to cover up an Overseer’s head, imagining it popping like a cherry underneath the pressure of his loathing.

He forces it back down. This moment was all Ryan, not him. But a little part of him whispers that the whole scenario is still utterly _them_ , through and through - just with Ryan setting up the board this time, even unbeknownst to Ray, and Ray himself still landing that perfect shot.

 _Don’t get used to it_ , he tells himself, stubborn as possible.

He begins the climb down from the building, and by the time he hits the ground, staggering a little with how far that final drop was without Ryan’s hands offering support.

By the time he straightens, the west entrance swings back open.

Two more Overseers pile out awkwardly, swinging around. One’s staggering, the mask not even on - just dragged out of sleep or otherwise indisposed. The other spots Ray instantly and charges. He sees Ryan shift out of the corner of his eye, but then Ray just brings his pistol up and fires. The bullet punches through the man’s chest, blowing him back a few feet. Before Ray can move his aim towards the second Overseer, Ryan slams the man up against the slaughterhouse wall by his throat.

“Ray,” Ryan says urgently, “our last guy, who I assume is Marshall, is going for the east entrance. Can you —”

“Got it,” Ray says, and turns to sprint around the slaughterhouse. His boots slide on wet stone and he scrabbles around the side, turning the corner and nearly slamming right into a man.

No Overseer mask on. In too much of a hurry to get out, probably. The man in question yelps and scrambles back, and right before he turns to sprint away, Ray sees the scar underneath the mop of black hair along his cheek. It’s their man. He levels the gun, sets his sight at the man’s spine as he slips and almost falls in the alley.

Then Ryan turns the corner, right in the middle of Marshall’s path, and Ray’s finger twitches on the trigger.

The mask is off, hanging uselessly from Ryan’s fingers. “Hey, Firland,” says Ryan, easy as anything, fingers pulling a knife from his belt like an afterthought, “remember me?”

“Oh,” noted Overseer Marshall Firland whimpers, his knees shaking as he searches desperately for an escape route. “Shit.”

He swivels to the right, and then the knife arcs from Ryan’s fingers. It’s a low shot - aimed downwards, and all Ray can do is watch as the knife buries itself hilt-deep in Marshall’s thigh. The man falls instantly with a wail, fingers clutching at his leg. He pulls them back red with blood, audibly hyperventilating. Ray can hear it even at the other end of the alley.

“Ryan,” Ray begins, his voice hoarse and caught deep in his throat. The very words scratch.

Ryan eases forward and sets his boot on Marshall’s chest. “Don’t scream,” he states, “or I’ll cut your fucking worthless tongue out like I should’ve years ago.” His fingers flick back and the knife rockets backwards, blood spurting from Marshall’s leg. Major artery cut, which means the man’s probably dead anyway out here. Ryan catches the knife like he’s been doing it since the day he was born, all of that awkward practice and open cuts on his palm from weeks ago forgotten.

Ray shuffles closer. He’s not sure what to do with himself, pistol back in his belt and arms twisted against each other.

Ryan kneels down over Marshall, knees on either side of the man’s chest. Ray’s seen Ryan a lot of different ways. He’s seen something close to this in some of those moments where a person who owns them money denies them. He’s seen other parts of it in the hours before a heist, where Ryan goes cold and deliberate, every motion calculated. But the nuances still feel different.

“Ryan,” Ray says again.

Ryan presses the flat of the knife along Marshall’s scar. “You were lucky,” he says, quiet and low. He shows no sign of having heard Ray at all, like he’s somewhere else. “You were lucky that day. I was young and stupid and - now I’m neither of those things, so I guess you’re a lot less lucky today, huh?” The pressure from the knife cuts open a thin line right along the old scar. A literal interpretation of reopening old wounds.

Marshall whimpers, the sound utterly pitiful.

Ray winces despite himself. Here, in perfect display, is the difference between him and Ryan. What Ray does is often brutal, but never cruel. He shoots to kill almost always, unless it’s an informant they need alive. Then he aims for a leg, usually. He is rarely looking to terrify.

Ryan presses the tip of the knife against Marshall’s chin. “You know what this is about?”

Marshall’s eyes flicker over to Ray, confusion setting in. “No,” he squeaks. “I know why you’re here, but not him.”

Ryan hums slightly and turns his wrist, enough for the tip of the knife to break through the skin. A bead of blood slips slowly downwards towards Marshall’s throat, Adam’s apple bobbing nervously as he swallows. “Geoff Ramsey,” Ryan informs him idly, “does not appreciate a piss-poor attempt at blackmail, especially by dumbass craven Overseers who got too big for their fucking boots.”

Ray almost snorts to himself. Guess he knows why Ryan reads all those plays now. Easy to sound good if you spend every spare moment absorbing theater.

“Shit,” Marshall breathes, the movement of his jaw causing the knife to cut him a little deeper. “You’re Ramsey’s new guy. Which means he’s —”

He flails an arm out randomly in Ray’s direction. There’s something limp and gross about the motion, but before Ray can form a snarky comment, Ryan stands and sets his boot on Marshall’s wrist. It’s light, but enough to trap him. Then Ryan applies pressure, and even from a distance, Ray can hear the man’s wrist snap.

Marshall screams.

Ryan steps off of him like he’s disgusting, some kind of bug he’s wiping off the sole of his shoe, whose guts are scraping against the ground, and kicks Marshall hard in the side of the head. The sound cuts off into a low moan,

“Here’s how it’s going to be,” Ryan begins. His tone has rearranged itself into something with vicious cold in it. “You’re going to answer our questions. I think you’re lying, or you say something I just plain don’t like, or - and here’s the big one - you fucking try to mention Ray here again, and I hurt you. Now, unlike Ray, who, bless his heart, would probably put you out of your misery pretty quickly once you started screaming and crying and whatever - I’m willing to stay here for a while and keep going until you tell me what I want.”

He sets his left boot back on Marshall’s chest, pinning him there to the ground. Then he tilts his head. “Got it?”

The man’s head moves on his neck frantically, an awkward nod. Ray notes with a strange kind of distance that he’s crying, just a little, some tears tracking wet paths down his cheeks.

Ryan’s still smiling. He flips the knife idly, catching it before it can plummet and impale Marshall through the eye. “Good. Let’s begin.” He tilts the mask back, not a care in the world, and grins over at Ray. “You start.”

“Sorry?” Ray asks flatly.

Ryan points the knife down at Marshall. He seems slightly exasperated by the delay. “Questions for this guy. C’mon. You know what Geoff wants better than I do.”

“Uh.” Ray’s voice roughens at the edges. “Let’s start simple. What do you know, and how’d you find it out?”

Marshall licks his lips. “Fuck you,” he hisses.

Ryan sighs and nudges Marshall’s other hand out flat with his boot. He sets his boot on that wrist instead and proceeds to just casually drop the knife from between his forefinger and thumb, point facing downwards. It plummets and punches through Marshall’s palm with a wet crunch, the entire moment so casual that Ray almost doesn’t realize what’s happening until the blood starts to flow.

“Answer the question.” Ryan’s tone has switched to somewhere between a disappointed father and a disappointed teacher.

Marshall’s breath limps out of his mouth, slow and stilted. “Not much,” he breathes. “Just - names, you know, and general descriptions and your general location. Enough to sound good, but not enough to really fuck Geoff over, I swear.” Ray and Ryan look at each other. What Marshall here swears doesn’t mean shit. The damage has still been done.

Ryan reaches down and yanks the knife out again.

“How did you find out?” Ray is forcing his tone to flatten.

Marshall almost laughs, the sound more delirious and unhinged than anything coherent. “Everyone knows who Ramsey is. Fucking - basic deduction about how many of you there are and how you always manage to disappear could point you towards the old slaughterhouses. If the gangs around here had more than one brain cell to share between all of them —”

“You’re not that much smarter,” Ray snaps, his patience draining away, “or else you wouldn’t be here, asshole.”

Ryan smiles over at him, the warmth gone by the time he looks back down at Marshall. “Who’d you give the info to?”

“No one.” Some of Marshall’s teeth are crooked on the side where Ryan cut his cheek open. It would take a lot of force to do that with a knife, but Ray can imagine how much rage forced Ryan’s hand. “Yet. Fuck knows I had some people asking around about it.”

“Who?” It’s easier to cut him off rather than let him feed his ego before Ryan kills him.

“Exactly who you’d think. Some of the Hatters. Dead Eels were thinking of getting together a collection fund. Most of them want to see what kind of shit you’re keeping in that slaughterhouse, all that stuff you stole from the banks and the aristocrats and shit.”

The two of them look at each other. Ray shrugs - _I know what I want to know_ \- and Ryan nods. “That’s all we needed to know. Thank you.” Ryan _would_ thank someone that he’s brutally injured and interrogated. “Right. Ray, get it over with. We don’t have all day.” He steps off of Marshall’s chest and the man squeaks, trying to move one of his hands and failing miserably.

“Hah,” Ray manages weakly, “what?”

Ryan pauses in the midst of reaching up to tug his mask back down. “You heard me. Don’t play dumb.”

“Oh, fuck you. I’m not doing this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not - you’ve ruined his leg and both his hands, Ryan. What else do you want?” He can feel the weakness in the argument. Marshall Firland knows. He knows too much, and an unpredictable man with that kind of information will only become a liability. Suddenly Ray feels very small all over again underneath the look Ryan gives him, like he’s somehow disappointed and validated at once. Like he knew this was what Ray was going to do. But it’s one thing to kill someone who’s drawn a knife or a gun, who’s got a weapon pointed at someone else on the crew.

This is not that. The man is helpless on the ground, even if he’s something that Ray so viscerally hates that even looking at the uniform makes his stomach do this soft little flip. _You could —_

Marshall wheezes a little on the ground. He’s managed to roll over onto his side, bringing his legs up against his chest. “Fucking hell,” he coughs, “didn’t know the Fakes had a kid that soft for their sniper. The way people talk about you guys... ”

Ryan’s foot shifts like he’s thinking of kicking Marshall in the ribs a few times.

“Shut up,” Ray says, and he’s trying to stare at anything else - at the warehouse wall, at the street, at the cobblestones.

He feels Ryan’s eyes snapping over to him. And he knows that if he looks, he’ll see that sick smugness sliding over Ryan’s features too. They know each other too well. Ryan knows that Marshall is the perfect person to push all of Ray’s buttons - the Abbey and a pretentious fuck and a threat to the crew.

Ray’s hands squeeze shut into fists. He draws his pistol again before he can think about it too much, pulling back on the hammer with a low click.

Ryan’s boots pace around Marshall’s heaving body. The toe of his boot presses against the man’s stomach until he flops over. It forces him to see the barrel of the gun.

Marshall starts begging. The words hit Ray’s brain. They register as sound but not much else.

Ray’s _here_ and _not here_ , holding the gun and looking down at himself holding the gun. There’s still some latent fear ticking away frantically in his chest. You don’t just shoot an Overseer and get away with it. He knows that. You don’t just kill the people who protect you from _it_ , from the unknowable thing that turns good people bad and rotten, that is out to ruin everything in the Empire of the Isles.

Ryan knew what he was going to ask from the second he told Ray that he didn’t like him being afraid of the Abbey. That was all said. But unsaid was the other half of that sentiment: Overseers are just men, and men die every fucking day. They die worse in Dunwall than anywhere else.

His hesitation must be visible, because Ryan starts talking again. “It’s still your choice. I want to make that very clear. You walk away and I’ll shoot him and we keep moving, like always. But if you do shoot him - I understand that too. This is different than what you normally do. Rooftops give you some distance. This doesn’t. And it’s not for everyone, I know. But I see a certain capacity here. With you. With me.” Ryan’s voice is nearly too good, in moments like this, at assuaging Ray’s fears, in slowing his thoughts down from a frantic whir to a slow tick.

Ray wishes his thoughts were a mess right now, so that perhaps his finger would just twitch on the trigger and he could almost convince himself that it would be someone else’s fault.

Ryan continues, “You won’t be any less to me no matter what you choose here, Ray. This is about you, not me. There’s a nobility in mercy. It’s just not a quality I expected you to have, all things considered.”

“Shut up,” Ray repeats, unsure if he’s reprimanding Ryan or himself. He aims the gun anyway.

Ryan looks at him and says absolutely nothing.

Marshall whimpers on the ground, struggling like he's trying to drag his body away from the anchor of Ryan's boot. The alleyway is perfectly silent. The whole city seems to have paused itself just for him, for the three of them and whatever happens here.

Ray pulls the trigger. He does not look away.


	12. to claim a few victims

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this week, things both good and bad happen. i can confirm that there are Many Of Those Things, but i cannot confirm whether the ratio is stronger in favor of Good or Bad.
> 
> basically, plot-heavy this week and some wind-down next week. let's go, folks.

“Ray,” Ryan begins. His tone is low and soothing, which only sounds condescending at this point

Ray keeps his shoulders straight and his steps even as he heads back down the alley. Marshall’s corpse is dumped in a sewer right now for the rats to feed on, weighed down with stones in his pockets and shoved into his boots. Ray himself is a good three feet in front of Ryan at this point, the two of them circling deeper into the docks before heading back towards the slaughterhouse. It’s the long road home, really, in order to avoid two sightings by some poor civilians.

This is all good, smart work.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Ryan, behind him again but growing closer: “Ray. Stop for a second and listen to me.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ray says, persistent with that epithet. He feels like some kind of broken machine, his mouth built to say that over and over again and nothing else.

A gloved hand ends up on his shoulder and tugs him back, shoving him against the wall with a surprising amount of force. Ray stiffens and immediately brings his hands up to try and shove Ryan away. He can’t go through with the motion. Instead, his hands end up sort of awkwardly sitting on Ryan’s chest, unwilling to start another fight in an alley this soon after the last one.

Ryan tugs off the mask. He doesn’t even keep it in his hand - just drops it with a clatter against the stones, and all the breath in Ray’s body stops where it is.

“Don’t fucking lock down on me again,” Ryan growls. He’s not angry. Ray knows what angry Ryan looks like. He’s exasperated, sure, and maybe a little pissed off, but that’s where this stops.

He tries not to think about how the two of them are, just maybe, the closest they’ve been to each other since that moment in Ryan’s bedroom.

“You telling me not to do something doesn’t actually do shit,” Ray decides to point out. Ryan’s free hand twitches into a fist in his side. He must notice the way Ray’s eyes snap to the twitch, because his fingers loosen almost instantly.

“Fuck,” Ryan snaps. “What is it, Ray? What’s the problem? Because you can’t tell me you haven’t shot Overseers before, haven’t shot someone before. Haven’t _wanted_ to shoot someone like Marshall before. It’s not like this is new to you.”

“It’s all new,” Ray spits, “it’s fucking new. I don’t wake up every morning and consider _oh, how am I going to execute an Overseer today,_  Ryan! That’s you. That’s all you, that’s not me, and every time I think we’re starting to understand each other, you project all of your shit onto me. Sure, when I was younger I wanted revenge so bad that I probably would’ve shot him the second you offered, but I grew the fuck up. I got smart. It’s nice that you didn’t have to, that your stupid powers make it easy for you to exist in a world where getting revenge is consequence-free, but it’s not for the rest of us! I can’t - I can’t dodge bullets or see through walls or do anything except what I’m good at, which is sniping and scouting and not getting myself killed. If I get shot, I bleed out in a gutter somewhere and no one finds my body until the rats have chewed most of me up anyway.”

The words are spilling out of him, frantic and rushed. It feels like the most he’s ever said to Ryan in one moment.

Maybe it is.

“You think it’s all consequence-free,” Ryan says slowly. He sounds audibly confused.

Ray’s teeth grind against each other. That’s not what he meant. And he can see a shadow of something flicker across Ryan’s face. Doubt. “Not consequence-free,” he finally manages. “Just fewer of them, maybe. If we were to compare numbers.” It defuses the anger from before. It weakens his statement. Maybe he should take a page of Ryan’s bloody book here and start reading plays just so he gets a little better at putting a half-decent decisive monologue together.

Or perhaps he’d rather fucking die right here than put in that kind of effort.

Ryan tilts his head. “What would you have done,” he asks quietly, his hands still on Ray’s shoulders, “if it had been you instead of me?” _It_ could be anything.

They both know what Ryan means.

Ray stares at him. “I don’t know.” He tries to imagine it - tries to imagine the Outsider, black-eyed and sallow, approaching him in his restless dreams right after his parents died, hours into his first night passing out from exhaustion in an alley. He would have been so young then. He would’ve been even more scared. He tries to imagine that mark on his own hand, burned and blackened into his skin.

He can’t. It’s so far removed from who he is.

“I was just curious.” Ryan’s voice remains soft. “I still don’t know what the right answer is, even all these years later. I don’t know if I made the right choice. Sure, I survived the plague, I got to do what I wanted to, but - what now? The mark doesn’t mean anything. Yes, I can stop time and kill three men in the same time it would take to kill one, but I can still bleed out in that gutter like anyone else.”

“I don’t know what the right choice would be either.”

Ray doesn’t admit being wrong very easily. This is the antithesis to everything that he is, but if Ryan is trying to defy his own shitty nature, then the least Ray can do is offer the same thing.

Ryan’s mouth twitches into a smile, his eyes bright and glittering. “So why’re you so eager to tell me that I made the wrong one?”

Ray inhales. The way Ryan asks that question - gently provocative, like it’s easy for him to poke holes in all of Ray’s anger, as if this is rational at all - makes his jaw ache with tension. The only thing to do is to try to drag the conversation away from that question.  “Why did you want me to kill Firland?”

Ryan looks at him. “I told you. They’re just men. They die like anyone else. Like you, and me.”

“That’s not what I was asking.”

“No.” Ryan smiles a little, the motion small and helpless. “I guess it isn’t.”

“Sometimes I just want to fucking hit you,” Ray says, and maybe it’s more genuine than it’s ever been before. Ryan laughs, but it doesn’t sound quite _amused_ . “You always do this. You - answer my questions, but you don’t _really_ answer them.”

“You never answer my questions either, so don’t get self-righteous on me about this,” Ryan replies, and Ray is really not in the mood for some old-fashioned verbal jousting at the moment. The recoil from the gun is still vibrating in his hands, in his bones.

Ray doesn’t realize his voice is climbing until it’s too late. “ _I’m_ self-righteous? You’re the most self-righteous pretentious fuck I’ve ever met, and I’ve stolen from people with fifteen generations of nobility behind them.”

“Aren’t you sweet,” Ryan nearly coos, knowing that it’s pissing Ray off, and Ray feels his fingers tighten and curl against Ryan’s coat.

But anything saccharine drops from Ryan’s tone and expression at once, his hand moving off of Ray’s shoulder to curl around his jaw instead. It forces them to look at each other. “I’m mostly patient, Ray, but I’m getting very fucking tired of this back and forth. So if you want to tell me to fuck off, and you really mean it, you _can_. I want you to know that. I will respect your decision. But you haven’t said that. You’ve talked a lot of shit - which I can also appreciate, but I don’t believe a single damn word of it.”

“I almost fucking smashed your head in with a brick that one time,” Ray starts, and Ryan gives him a look that convinces him to shut his mouth for right now and let Ryan gets whatever he has to say out.

“I think we understand each other very well,” Ryan continues, and Ray almost calls bullshit right then and there. But there’s no space for him to interject. “Or - mostly. So what happened back there with Firland was about fixing that _mostly_ , because I don’t think _most_ of something has ever been good enough for either of us. And I know you think I’m throwing you to the wolves right now, but I’m not. You asked me if there’s anything I wouldn’t do for you, remember?”

Ray nods.

Ryan’s smile is nearly sad at the corners. “Ray, I carried you across half the Distillery District. I let you see me. I let you see the moment that made me into who I am. I would kill for you.”

“I know. I fucking know.” Ray’s voice is barely a whisper.

Ryan’s thumb presses slowly along Ray’s lips as if he’s fascinated, the motion doubling as a way to hush him. “So, in the end, I think we both know the answer to your question.”

Ryan is normally terrifying. But the terror Ray’s felt before has never been quite this strange and stilted. It’s tempered and sharpened at once by Ryan’s sheer proximity, the way his words keep falling like physical blows. He almost twitches back when Ryan’s thumb moves back to his jaw.

Both of them seem to be waiting for something.

Ray’s mouth moves. “I guess so.”

“This always scares you off,” Ryan mutters more to himself than Ray. He seems to have somehow moved even closer, the two of them barely kept apart by Ray’s hands frozen and still against the fabric of Ryan’s coat. “I shouldn’t —”

“I’m okay,” Ray breathes, staring right at Ryan, and for once, he’s pretty sure he means it.

They’re not okay. They probably won’t ever be. Ryan is a mountain of trauma and bad intent masquerading as a man, and Ray’s caustic and anxious and angry as anyone can be. But Ray has never had someone who would do anything for him. The rest of the crew would do almost anything, but not like this. Their definitions of everything, of anything, remain limited.

And at the same time: he isn’t consciously sure what he would do for Ryan. But maybe, deep down, he knows the answer to that too. Maybe he’s known since that moment when he was willing to charge around a corner and kill three guards to save Ryan’s life.

Ryan’s mouth twists slightly. “I really shouldn’t.”

Ray feels almost light-headed at everything that’s happened. He isn’t really sure what Ryan’s talking about here, but he sounds genuinely worried about the prospect of this thing he shouldn’t do. “Ry,” he says, light and strange, “I guarantee that I’ve probably seen worse, so unless you’re about to whip your dick out and reveal you’ve got some horrifying birth defect, I can handle it.”

Ryan’s laugh is short and brisk. “I fucking hate you, Ray,” he says, and leans across the meager distance between them to kiss him.

It’s not that Ray hasn’t thought about what kissing Ryan would be like. He almost has, a few times, but his brain always manages to shut that line of thought down the second lip-on-lip action ensues. And in that second, Ray’s almost kind of glad his brain failed him, because kissing Ryan is absolutely not what he expected. Not even on a clinical detached level. His teeth clash up against Ryan’s and it faintly hurts, but then Ryan’s hand is on the back of his neck, changing the angle slightly.

Ray’s hands are still curled against Ryan’s jacket, even as Ryan’s hand slips from Ray’s jaw to the back of his head, fingers tangling in his hair. He doesn’t quite pull, as tight as his grip becomes. Everything is soft and warm, Ray ignoring the brickwork scraping against his back. The weight of Ryan’s body presses against his, Ray tugging him as close as he can get without letting go of the jacket.

If he lets go, he’s pretty sure his legs are going to give out.

From what Ray knows about the first kisses between two people, they’re supposed to be pretty chaste. Ryan, however, skips over about the first thirty steps and every pretense in the world and his tongue ends up right in Ray’s mouth. Which isn’t bad. It’s very much the opposite of bad, and is in fact kind of a fucking incredible moment.

The noise Ryan makes when he pulls back is outright desperate. Ray very gracefully staggers a step or two with him because of the way his arms are locked and refusing to loosen, and nearly slams his head against Ryan’s jaw. Ryan steadies him with a chuckle, already smug as hell.

“Oh,” Ray says, the sound low and hoarse in his throat.

Ryan’s expression turns to neutral almost immediately. He steps back as his expression continues to twist. “I knew this would scare you off,” he snaps, looking down at his own hands as if blaming them. “Damn it.”

“Shut the hell up. I’m good.” Ray’s more than good. He still feels strangely light and distant, and he kind of wants to kiss Ryan again, even as half of him is dragging itself limply backwards. Control is good. Control is absolutely what he’s good at. “I’m just, uh - haven’t kissed anyone in a while. Wasn’t expecting you to be my first kiss in - a while. I’m good with everything. Swear on Gavin’s huge fucking nose.”

Ryan smiles again, but there’s still a cruel twist to it. “That’s something exceptionally large to swear on, Ray. Besides, I’d like a little more proof than that.”

“... What kind of proof.” He hates to even have to ask. He’s half-expecting Ryan to continue jumping every gun in the universe and just stick his hand into Ray’s pants at this rate.

Instead, he gets a smirk. “Take some fucking initiative.” Ryan turns back towards the end of the alley like nothing happened. He reaches down and scoops up his mask. It muffles his voice again as he pulls it on. “I’m doing all the work here. It feels very one-sided.”

Fuck. Ray swallows and pretty much keeps himself pressed against the wall for some minimal pretense of safety. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to avoid - touching Ryan again or just surging forward to kiss him. He presses his thumb along his own lips slowly as if trying to wipe the feeling away. It persists. It settles on his skin like a slow shock.

He takes a few steps towards Ryan, forcing himself back together, and then the end of the alley explodes into a cacophony of noise.

Three City Watch members are squeezed into the space, shouting. Ryan’s hand settles on his pistol and he turns.

“You!” one of them shouts at Ryan. Ray starts to slide his pistol from his belt, but one of the Watch members is faster.

He sees the end of the pistol burst into flame and just closes his eyes. Ray hasn’t been shot recently, but he still knows the acute pain that comes from that kind of wound - lung or gut or otherwise. At least he got to make out with Ryan a little bit before fulfilling that basic prophecy from mere minutes ago - bleeding out in an alley for the rats to feed on. It’s a basic tenet of living in Dunwall. There are just things you learn to expect about how you’re going to go out.

Ryan’s voice echoes down the alleyway, Ray’s name desperately caught in his mouth.

\---

Something _screams_ in the air.

Ray’s eyes fly open, expecting pain to accompany the sound. The whole scene has shifted. Ryan’s in front of him, where he wasn’t before, and Ray’s eyes snap to the way Ryan has a hand clutched to his stomach. Ryan’s pistol is up, smoke spiraling from the end, and Ray watches as the three guards at the other end of the alley topple, a bullet having blown a crater in each of their chests. Or just one bullet, and the wound shared between them.

“Ryan,” Ray breathes, and the man in front of him topples backwards.

Ray catches him. It’s instinct. Ryan’s knees sag and Ray reaches forward to drag him up, turning him around so he can look. Ryan’s fingers are stained red with blood against his torso. “Shit,” Ray snarls, trying to pry Ryan’s fingers back to get a look at the wound. Ryan shakes his head and mouths _pressure_ , clutching at his own body as if trying to hold it together. He’s right. He’s right, even injured and probably in shock. Pressure is more important than seeing how bad the wound is. It’s still a gut wound, so no matter what, it’s bad news.

The noise was loud. Even two gunshots are going to grab attention. Ray glances around, inhales, and pulls Ryan up some more. “We have to go,” he says, “we have to fucking go right now. Just move your arm a little, like that. Yeah. There you go. I’ve got you. We’re good, we’re fine.”

“You’ve got me,” Ryan agrees, the statement faint but true.

\---

The street itself seems to heave and throb against them.

Ray keeps his arm around Ryan’s shoulders. _Don’t you let him fucking die on you_. So he does what he can. He drags Ryan into a side alley, his brain functioning more on base gutter rat thoughts than anything close to a seasoned criminal, and props him up against a wall. Ryan’s head sags a little like his neck’s come loose, so Ray grabs his jaw and forces his head up. “Don’t fucking pass out me,” he snarls.

Ryan smiles. “I won’t.”

He sounds so calm. Calm can be bad. It can mean shock. Ray scrambles over to the manhole and lifts the cover off, metal scraping against the stone. He drops it with a resounding clang and almost trips trying to get back, legs scrabbling for purchase. “C’mon,” he hisses, hooking Ryan’s arm back around his shoulders, “get the fuck up, your legs still fucking work —”

The two of them stagger and sway over to the manhole. Ray goes first just so he can keep Ryan from tipping over right into the sewer on the way down. The last thing they need is a nasty infection. But Ryan, despite his gut wound, manages to get down the ladder with relative ease. At the same time, Ray pretty much has to hold him up once they start walking through the sewer together.

They can climb back up when the smell of sea air drifts in, rotting fish guts and salt.

Ray can almost feel Ryan fading out against him, dead weight on his back. “Hey,” he snaps, shaking Ryan as hard as he can, “what the fuck do I have to do to keep you with me here, huh? Song and dance? Fucking comedy club entertainment?”

Ryan laughs weakly. It’s better than nothing.

Some part of Ray’s brain, operating on overdrive and instinct still, knows exactly what to do. It takes over as the rest of Ray’s mind fixates on route, on when to turn and when to keep straight. “You can’t pass out on me,” that instinct begins, “because if you fucking pass out on me, you’re going to miss out on this kickass story that you’ve wanted to hear, like, forever. And I’m not telling it again, so you have to suck it up.”

“That’s kind of mean of you, Ray.” Well, Ryan’s still conscious enough to be contrary. Gut wound can’t be that bad. Only very bad but not fatal. That’s a good distinction.

Ray adjusts the way Ryan’s arm sits on his shoulders and continues to force himself forward. “I am mean, dumbass.” They stagger and veer a little close to the water and Ray pulls them back, staggering another step or two. He isn’t built to carry Ryan this far, but they’re going to have to make do. “So shut up. I’m not fucking good at telling stories, but I’m going to try here, so don’t put your shitty theater standards on me.”

“I’d never do that to you,” Ryan breathes out.

“So, uh.” Ray’s never been the type to tell stories. He tells jokes, at the very best. But now, desperate and distracted, he has to try to cobble something together. “Let’s say - let’s say we’re in Karnaca, okay, and it’s maybe twenty years ago. Around there. And there’s this kid, whose name is _definitely_ not Ray, I’ll have you know. This kid is living there, lived there his whole life. He’s around six when things go wrong. It’s a fast spiral, too.” It feels a little easier to project his story onto something else, onto some nameless faceless kid who is certainly not him, and who looks nothing like him.

“Most of the time things like that happen all at once, and very abruptly,” Ryan agrees.

“Yeah.” Ray stares down the rest of the sewer, trying to remember the route he’s taken through this district before. The tunnel turns towards the southeast here, which is good. That’s the general direction they want. Their boots splash through grime and water together, Ryan’s steps slower and limper. “So. What happens is, this kid and his parents are in the market, right, and his mom points up at some shit up above - fuck knows what, maybe one of those windmills out there or something - and right where she’s pointing, this chunk breaks off this ancient building and kills a guard. Plummets a good fifty feet and crushes his skull, life over like that.”

“And this is Karnaca,” Ryan murmurs, “where superstition about magic is law. I assume things don’t go well for here for our…” He glances over at Ray. “Our intrepid young hero, let’s call him.”

“Right.” He hates how easily Ryan must be putting the pieces together, even shot in the gut and half-delirious. Ray’s never been good at being subtle. “So word gets around to the Abbey. And one day, a week or so later, our kid’s sitting on the floor probably playing with some stupid toys, and the Overseers kick down the door. He’s just sitting there holding this fucking - toy boat, and the door breaks and an Overseer rushes in and tries to grab his dad in the living room.”

His voice wavers slightly. Ray forces his shoulders to straighten and readjusts his grip on Ryan’s arm, keeping them both upright.

The story begins to hurt to tell here. He’s not sure about the rhythm of it - not sure about how to communicate time, how fast the next few minutes were and how slow the following nights were. Ray’s voice trips over itself. “But it’s just - his dad fights back. And Overseers back then, and now, and always, I guess, would kill anyone for fighting back. So this kid sees the Overseer just shove a sword through his dad’s back, right through, tip bursts out here —” He taps an index finger against his sternum. “Sees the body just fucking fall, limp and bleeding and basically dead. His mom’s getting dragged out of the bathroom in nothing, taking a bath when these guys burst in and killed her husband, and this one big fucking Overseer, built like a brick shithouse, is just dragging her by the hair.”

“All the way out the door?”

“Out the door. Down the stairs. As an example to everyone else in the building. I could - The _kid_ could probably hear her feet bouncing on every single step on the way down.”

“Probably,” Ryan agrees. “I assume someone’s noticed our kid and his toy boat.” It feels like he’s humoring Ray by going along with the idea that this story belongs to someone else.

Ray swallows. “Yeah. This other Overseer tries to grab him, y’know, makes him drop the boat, but our kid’s not a complete idiot. So he bites this Overseer’s hand - through the glove, which is kickass - and just runs for it. Almost trips and fucking dies on a two story drop out of the balcony, but really, that’s just the prelude to the rest of his life from here on out, so. Who really gives a fuck.”

Rotting fish and salt. They must be close. Ray spots a ladder a little further down the hallway and continues to drag them towards it. His shoulders are nearly numb but still aching.

“Do you know what happened to the mother?” Ryan’s voice is soft but still manages to cut through Ray’s labored breathing like the sharpest knife in the world.

 _No_ , he almost says.

“Yes,” Ray says shortly. No illusions or pretense left, no attempt to switch pronouns and personhood to tell a narrative. Just him, and the first and last truth that he knows. Everything else he could tell - that moment etched so deep into his memory that it plays on repeat when he closes his eyes on bad days - stops in his throat.

Ryan doesn’t say anything at all.

\---

They stagger into the slaughterhouse without having shared another word between them. Ray applies his shoulder to shove the door open, stumbling in. Michael stands up immediately, his chair toppling, and both he and Ray simultaneously shout Jack’s name. The man in question spins around, hands still wrapped around some tools, until those tools drop to the ground with a clatter. “Holy fuck,” he says.

Four people abruptly rush forward, practically lifting Ryan off of Ray’s shoulders.

“I’m fine,” Ryan says faintly.

Geoff smacks him hard on the back of the head. “People die from gut wounds, you fucking idiot. How long were you carrying him?” The question’s obviously directed over at Ray, even if he’s looking at Ryan. Ray stumbles over to lean against the table, sucking in oxygen as hard as he can.

“A while,” he says. He doesn’t know.

Jack and Michael get Ryan into what is, technically, his bed in this slaughterhouse, not that he needs it. Gavin already has the medical tools, dragging the bedside table over to where Jack points. They work like a well-oiled machine, so used to people stumbling in with nearly deadly wounds that it all becomes second nature. Geoff shoves a glass of water into Ray’s hands. “Drink,” he says, “before you pass the fuck out.”

Ray tips the glass back. Mostly he’s trying to wash that taste out of his mouth - rot and salt and shit. By the time he lowers the glass, Geoff’s gone, back at Ryan’s bedside like this is a man he’s known forever and not just someone he hired mere months ago.

Has it really only been months?

“Someone,” Jack says, quick and urgent, “get me a clean syringe and the bottle on the third shelf from the top up there. It’s to the left, dark green, labeled as —”

“You don’t have to knock me out.” Ryan’s voice cuts through the chaos. Ray freezes mid-step towards Jack’s workbench and shelves, half of his body rotating towards Ryan’s voice as if physically tugged towards it. “I’ve stitched myself up and set bones before on nothing, Jack, so just get it fucking over with. Faster is better.”

Jack looks over at Ray desperately. Ray shrugs, helpless as the rest of them before Ryan’s sheer willpower.

“It’s going to hurt,” Jack points out.

Ray slinks closer to the bedside, squeezing into the tiny amount of space between Michael and the bed.

Ryan laughs. The sound is more than a little pained. “I know.” He opens his eyes and looks right at Ray, as if perfectly aware of when he is and is not present.

Jack is pulling on the cleanest pair of gloves they have with a kind of cold precision. He aims a finger at Ray. “Go outside for two or three hours. You’re closest to Ryan, so you’re the most likely to accidentally cause a fucking problem.” It’s common practice for them. Normally Geoff, old man with the bleeding heart that he is, is the one that Jack kicks out to go stand outside and find something to occupy himself with until the blood and gore and pain is over with.

Ray doesn’t think he has a bleeding heart. “I can handle it,” he insists.

Geoff gestures from him to the door. “Out. Now. Don’t argue. Ryan’ll be fine.”

No way to argue with Geoff, really. Ray grimaces and sets the glass of water back down on the map of Dunwall in the center of the room. He takes his leave as gracefully as he can while sore and aching, his crossbow still slung across his back. But once outside, he stands out in the street for a few moments, unsure of what to do with himself.

Going elsewhere seems like a bad idea. He can’t just loiter out here, either.

After a moment, he turns back and climbs onto the slaughterhouse roof, collapsing flat onto his back and staring up at the sky as it turns purple and orange in the dying light.

He thinks of the last gut wound he can remember in the crew - Gavin, a year or two ago, stabbed in the stomach by some Bottle Street member with, ironically enough, a broken bottle. He had been there while Gavin had thrashed and screamed as Jack removed pieces of glass, all the way until Ray and Michael each had to grab one of Gavin’s flailing arms and pin him down against his bed.

They had to get him a new mattress afterwards. There was just so much blood, soaking through the fabric until the stain turned black.

There is no such thing as a gut wound without blood and pain.

He rolls onto his side and waits to hear what exactly Ryan screaming in pain is even like. He can’t imagine it. He can’t imagine the warm dark timbre of Ryan’s voice warping upwards in agony as Jack moves on with his precise and bloody work, metal instruments working to repair the damage done by a bullet. As much as Ray would prefer to forget whatever it's going to sound like, he knows that he won't. It will stay with him.

He’s still waiting for the sound, two hours later, as the night creeps in.  



	13. if all goes according to plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright. time for that weekly hiatus to make room for sever the tether concluding and... another project that i'm already 6k into. hope you guys like high school shit, because it's time for me to bring my patented Ray and Ryan Skills to that arena.
> 
> this chapter's conversational. features a lot of talking, a little bit of some other stuff, and some ray and ryan having to renegotiate the space between them.

Seven days since Ray carried Ryan through the sewers, and his shoulders are still out for revenge. Ray swings his feet off the edge of the building and stretches, muscles aching a little.

He’s still trying his best to not think about what happened. He goes out of the slaughterhouse. He talks. He gathers whatever Jack requests. He offers ideas on heist strategies. Sometimes, when they’re alone, he sits at Ryan’s bedside or brings him things from his little home. Mostly plays and books, Ryan murmuring titles he would prefer with gentle surety.

It’s in that middle ground in heist preparation - where the initial work is over but they’re waiting for the perfect moment - that leaves him bored and itching for something to happen. His normal partner in _something happening_ is downstairs with a bullet wound two inches across currently sewn together, which leaves Ray himself high and dry here.

But at the same time, today, the sun has, for once, broken through the clouds. He likes to be on the roof during those rare moments.

Heavy footsteps on the roof shock him out of his stupor. Ray yanks the pistol out of his belt to point it towards the noise.

The boots stop. A familiar laugh crosses the distance between them.

“On edge?” Ryan asks, and Ray rolls his eyes and flops back down onto his back, leaving the pistol on the ground. Ryan sits down next to him cross-legged and Ray squints up at him. He only squints more as Ryan takes a small circular tin out from the inside of his jacket.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” Ray says. “Jack’s going to fucking kill you.”

“Jack’s been fighting a losing battle to keep me on bedrest for twelve hours now, so I think he and Geoff have given up.” The man next to him pauses for a moment, turning the tin over in his hands.

“What’s that?” Ray asks, pushing himself up and using his hands to keep himself sitting upright.

Ryan tilts his head over at him. “Guess.”

“Fuck, man, I don’t know.” Ray shoves his glasses up on his nose. “All the human teeth you’ve collected? Your immortal soul?” It’s worth it to make Ryan laugh - not a wry little chuckle, but an outright laugh that makes his shoulders shake. Eager to keep on the roll he’s got going here, Ray keeps guessing. “Priceless gemstones you’re going to get me to shove up my ass to get past customs at the docks? A poison you’re going to force me to take so I finally shut the hell up and you get some peace and quiet?”

Ryan’s covering his eyes with his hand, the laugh decreased to something almost noiseless.

Finally he looks back up with an inhale, grinning over at Ray. “All good guesses, but no. It’s for you, actually. And I’ve got something else, but I’m sure this takes priority for you.”

Ray narrows his eyes. “How’d you get it? Thought you weren’t supposed to leave.”

Ryan grins. “Wrote a letter. Told Gavin who to bring it to, and met the guy outside this morning after Jack left with Geoff to buy some shit.” Damn it. Ryan’s looking like the cat who ate the canary here, and Ray can’t shake the feeling that he is personally going to be blamed when Ryan is discovered to be definitely not in bed.

Ray blinks as Ryan holds out the tin. He takes it and tilts it back and forth next to his ear, listening. Whatever it is is mostly weightless, but he can hear something sliding around inside. Plenty of loose space. He blinks. “Can I open it?”

“Probably,” Ryan says with a shrug. “Just be careful. Strong gust of wind might ruin it.”

If Ryan got him smelling salts as some kind of joke about Ray’s frequent meltdowns as of late (which are all caused by Ryan, as Ray would note to the jury), Ray’s going to have another damn breakdown right here and right now on the roof.

He pops open the tin carefully, lifting the lid up enough to reveal the contents without exposing it too much to the open air. A short bark of laughter crawls up his throat. It’s saleove - not the ground version that he talked shit about, but just the leaves, bright and whole. Exactly what he mentioned being so difficult to find in Dunwall for a good price. He snaps the tin shut.

Trust Ryan Haywood to know the right people to import a fairly illegal substance straight from Karnaca.

“Do I want to know how much this cost?”

Ryan’s smile is perfectly placid. “Probably not.”

Ray shakes his head. “You’re crazy. I’ve got to find somewhere to smoke it. Geoff’ll be pissed if the whole slaughterhouse reeks of it. It’s not bad, but it’s got - a smell when you light it up.”

There is a long pause. Ryan’s fingers are twisting in his lap, leather rubbing against leather. Finally, the man speaks. “You could come back over to my place tonight. I’ve got a balcony of sorts. And - we’ve got some things to talk about, I’d say.” His fingers finally lace together idly.

Ray freezes, his grip tightening around the container. Everyone else in the crew would tell him it’s a bad idea. Technically, Ryan shouldn’t even be leaving with the wound.

He doesn’t have to say yes. He could decide that he’s seen enough already.

“Sure,” he says anyway, voice hoarse.

Ryan grins so genuinely that it nearly takes Ray off guard. He stands and holds out a hand. “You’ll have to let Geoff know, considering he would prefer to have everyone in the fucking slaughterhouse at this ‘vital’ point of the heist.” There’s really nothing going on, but ever since that one heist preparation where Gavin wandered off, got insanely drunk, and passed out in a gutter over a week-long bender, somehow setting them back a full month in preparations - well, Geoff’s been more than a little aggressive about it.

_Fuck_ , Ray thinks. “I know,” he says aloud.

——

In his office, Geoff stares at the two of them like they’ve each sprouted an extra head.

He looks from Ryan to Ray for a long moment. “Ryan,” he says, his voice low and deliberate, “if you fucking lay a finger on Ray in a way he doesn’t like, I will know, and I will show up with a hammer and break that finger. And then I will break every one of your ribs, gut wound or no.”

“The way I remember it, a little while ago, you were willing to let me knock Ray out if it meant keeping things moving,” Ryan points out, and Ray elbows him so hard in the uninjured side that he feels it all the way up in his own shoulder. Fuck Ryan and thinking shit’s funny when it’s definitely not, when Geoff’s got that look up above his mustache that makes it look like he’s thinking of raining hell down on them both. This is not the way to get through to their boss’s heart here.

Geoff stares at him. “Excuse me?”

“Geoff,” Ryan says. “Ray’s an adult. We are two adults, and that’s all there is. Besides, I need to pick up some things for the heist. Ray can carry the boxes for me, since I’m apparently now a cripple according to you and Jack.”

“Yeah,” Ray agrees, “Ryan’s old as shit. He might die if he picks up a box. I’m young and spry and whatever, so I can do all the heavy lifting.”

Geoff jabs a finger at Ray. “Shut up, you fucking infant. Fucking stiff breeze would probably snap your arm in half.” But then he folds his arms and leans back in his chair, expression contemplative. “So just overnight.”

Ray opens his mouth, and Ryan cuts him off instantly. “Yeah. Let’s be honest with each other here. If you could get away from Gavin for a day, you would.”

“Fuck.” Geoff runs a hand through his hair. “Y’know, full disclosure - sometimes I think that it would be easier during heist prep if we just fuckin’ shot Gavin into the sun.”

A resounding Morley-accented _what_ drifts through the open doorway. Whoops. A little too loud with their Gavin bashing.

“Just loaded him into a massive trebuchet,” Geoff continues, ignoring the commotion outside, “like, fucking huge, wheeled it up, pointed it right at the sun, and shot him at it.”

“Giant nose would probably create enough drag to stop him from dying on the way back down. So, I’m all for it. When’s Jack going to draw up the blueprints?” Ray shrugs and leans forward, the chair creaking a little.

“Ray, not you too,” Gavin _wails_ outside in utter betrayal, and Ryan cracks a smile. Geoff does too, the expression crinkling the corners of his eyes. He sighs a little and leans forward, the humor dragging any resistance out of him. Ray sees Geoff’s shoulders sag. At the same moment, he sees Ryan lean forward slightly out of the corner of his eye. Someone’s fucking eager.

Geoff runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head. “Fine. Just be back by tomorrow afternoon. Don’t do anything stupid, stay safe, all that good shit. Ryan, don’t pull your damned stitches out.”

“Sure,” Ryan agrees.

His hand almost twitches towards Ray’s arm, as if about to tug him from the room. Ray was kind of joking about Ryan being eager, but apparently it was more real than he anticipated. The two of them stand almost simultaneously, and for a moment, Ray sees Geoff’s expression shift. The change is minute - some contemplative curl of his lip, as if he’s looking at interpretive art in a museum and trying to discern the meaning.

He almost expects Geoff to say something else.

Instead, he shakes his head and crooks a finger threateningly at Ryan. “Listen. Remember what I said, Haywood. Hammer. Ribs.”

Ryan offers a little mock salute, a gentle flick of two of his fingers.

——

Instead of Ray following Ryan, the two of them walk side by side.

The balcony, as it turns out, is merely part of the canal attached to the back of Ryan’s building with some little overhang built into it. Looking at the area, the design lends itself to boats pulling up and docking. Deliveries, maybe. Ryan gestures for Ray to sit. He watches as Ray borrows some of Ryan’s cigar wraps and begins to roll a joint. As long as it’s been since he’s done this, it’s not something he’s forgotten. A match flares up and then he lights the end, watching the paper burn down slightly. It’s a good burn, evening out as he tilts it a little.

Ryan’s mostly quiet, staring out at the sea.

Ray knows he’s made a horrible mistake the second he inhales. It’s not that the drug’s the problem - it feels good, that languid feeling settling in his bones. It’s that he gets _stupid_ on the stuff, open to suggestion and more passive. These are not things he can afford to be around Ryan, especially when the angle they’re at makes Ryan’s jawline cut especially sharp, the light turning his eyes a brighter blue than usual.

_Fuck_ , rational Ray thinks, approximately a million miles away from his body and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Current Ray, dipshit that he is, holds out the joint to Ryan. Surely this will fix the problem.

Ryan laughs a little, already starting to shake his head. “I’m not all that interested,” he begins.

Ray shoves the joint more insistently at him. “Friends don’t let friends smoke alone, Ry,” he says, utterly sincere.

With a roll of his eyes, Ryan takes the joint. It’s surprising how easily he handles it, the effect barely even visible. No cough. Nothing. He hands the joint back with a sigh, exhaling smoke at the same time. He looks good. Most people don’t look good on their first hit of saleove. There’s very little that’s elegant about it, and at best it pushes you towards something more languid and soft than anything assertive.

Yet Ryan looks perfectly composed. Perhaps he's got too much natural composure

“That’s fucked up,” Ray says aloud.

Ryan stares over at him. “What?”

Ray waves a hand vaguely. “You. All of it.”

Ryan nods slowly. And in that miniscule motion, the bob of his head and nothing else, Ray can almost see why Ryan was reluctant to take the joint from him. Something loosens in his shoulders and spine, dulling the knife edge every motion he makes sits on. It makes him seem more human, ironically enough, which is enough of a funny thought that it draws a weird little chuckle out of Ray.

Ray lays back on the stones, giving up all pretense of staying upright. He swings his boots idly. The impact of his heels against the stone must dislodge something, because there’s a snap and then a splash. Ryan leans forward to check the foundation a little as if concerned. Ray lets out a faintly overdramatic sigh. “If the damage is that bad, you can fucking sue me.”

“I could.” Ryan sounds contemplative about the prospect, pushing himself backwards until his back thumps back against the wall. Ray inhales hard on the joint to try to mellow out some of the strangeness of the moment. “I know a guy.” Even Ryan’s words are slowed slightly, softened around the edges. It melts his tone down to something relaxed.

“You know everyone,” Ray grumbles, watching the end of the joint burn down a little more.

Ryan plucks the joint from his hand again. Apparently they’re just doing this now. Smoke rolls out from his mouth, slow and soft. “Not everyone.”

“Yeah?”

Ryan holds out the joint and Ray takes it. Their fingers brushing against each other is nearly electric at this point, some strange state between painful and pleasurable. “Sometimes I think I know you, and sometimes - well, I know exactly fucking nothing.”

“That’s me. Mysterious as shit.”

“An enigma,” Ryan agrees mildly. “But one I think I understand a little more after what you told me in the sewer. Thank you for that, by the way. Riveting story.”

“Shit,” Ray grumbles. “You actually remember that?” Trust Ryan to remember a disjointed shitty story told as he was probably bleeding out.

Ryan looks very pretty when genuinely amused. He raises an eyebrow, and Ray’s brain just tries to shut itself off in protest of how good he looks in the sunlight. It’s like he forgot after mostly seeing Ryan cast in sickly blue tones from the whale oil lanterns in the slaughterhouse. “Hoping that I forgot?”

“You didn’t talk about it.” Ray picks at some loose stones, digging his fingernails in until it hurts. “I figured that if you remembered, you would’ve been all over me about it the second you were coherent.”

“I’m patient,” Ryan reminds him, and Ray snorts to himself. At the same time, he forces himself to sit up properly. It’ll be best to pull himself together as much as possible for this conversation.

He inhales hard on the joint, smoke raw against his throat. “What’ve you got to say?” It makes him feel like he’s got some more control if he starts asking the questions. Ray digs his fingers underneath a loose cobblestone and manages to pry it out from the ground. He skips it out into the ocean idly, watching as it bounces and then sinks beneath the waves.

“Not as much as you’d think.” Ryan’s smile doesn’t move. Ray blinks slowly at the statement. “I get it, though. That would traumatize anyone. Create something of a phobia, I’d say, which explains the meltdown after you shot Firland.” Ryan’s index finger begins to tap a slow rhythm against the stones, over and over. “Just one question. You said you knew what happened to your mother in the end. And I feel like that’s the lynchpin, so if you don’t mind me asking —”

“They burned her alive in the market as everyone I’d ever known watched.” Ray’s tone slips into something so clipped that it must come off as rude. “I saw it. Saw everything.” It feels easier to say that with the haze of saleove dulling his feelings down to something manageable. Ray’s good at feeling nothing, except he really isn’t. He’s good at pretending. He consistently feels too much, all the time, and the only way to fight it is to play the longest possible con.

Ryan reaches over and presses a hand against his back, rubbing a slow soothing pattern there against his spine. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” It is a cliche answer, but it’s better than nothing.

They sit there for a while longer.

Ryan doesn’t move any closer, keeping that six inch space between them. Ray continues to smoke until the joint’s too small to even comfortably hold between his thumb and index finger. Then he flicks the remains of the joint into the sea, watching as it goes out the second it hits the water’s surface. A moment later it’s gone, like nothing ever happened. Ryan stares out at nothing next to him, watching the waves as they roll into the harbor.

Ryan pulls himself to his feet. Ray can see him wince when he moves a certain way, hand pressing against the stitches along his stomach.

Ray’s hand almost twitches out to help him. “Still hurting?” he asks. It’s a stupid question, but it’s better than pretending nothing happened.

Ryan nods. Ray swallows and keeps himself quiet. Instead of throwing in a quip, he just follows Ryan back inside, candlelight warming the whole place up. Ray’s become much more comfortable in the space because of his own expeditions back here to pick up some of the books Ryan wanted. It’s not his. It is still certifiably Ryan’s, but he feels like he can stay here without instantly wanting to bolt.

Ryan tugs off his coat. Ray tenses up on some old instinct, seeing the dried bloodstain along Ryan’s shirt. Wearing white is never a good idea in their line of work, but it seems Ryan missed that memo. The twitch must be obvious, because Ryan looks at him. “I’d prefer to change,” he says, soft and casual, “if that’s alright with you. Little tired of wearing something caked in my own blood.”

“Yeah, no,” Ray says, which doesn’t mean anything. He shakes himself. “I mean, go ahead. Sorry. Just not used to seeing you without the coat.”

With a polite smile, Ryan disappears behind the wooden pallets. Even from here, Ray can hear the scrape of drawers opening and closing. Ray catches himself standing in the middle of the rest of the place, unsure what to do with himself. His brain seems to have caught up with a fact that most of it hadn’t quite understood - he’s here _overnight_.

What the fuck are they going to do for a whole night?

The part of Ray that’s been fixated on that kiss in the alley for days now hums itself awake. Ryan’s fucking mouth is a problem, a problem that Ray’s darkest thoughts imagine doing certain things to him. But the rest of Ray shakes it off and forces his legs towards the couch. Ryan doesn’t seem like the type to go straight from one kiss to sleeping together. They’ll probably just talk and make some small dinner and Ryan will read and it will be absolutely normal. Just them transposed into a new space, like that.

Ryan wanders back into the room in a clean shirt, untucked but still buttoned. It’s about as casual as they’ve ever gotten. He sits down on the other end of the couch and props his feet up on the table, crossing them. He rummages through the stack of books on the table next to the sofa, tugging out a thicker volume.

Ray stares down at his hands awkwardly. His eyes drift over to Ryan’s hand, the Outsider’s mark pitch black on his skin. It still draws the eye, but it inspires less of the fearful jab in his chest it did before.

Ryan flips through a few pages.

It takes Ray minutes to not be able to stand the silence. He begins to fidget despite himself, picking at a loose thread on the sofa.

Ryan’s head tilts towards him. “Not much of a reader, then?” He sounds disappointed but not particularly surprised.

Ray shakes his head. Ryan rolls his eyes and taps the space on the couch right next to him. “C’mere. I’ll tell you about this play.”

Ray has no idea why that requires him being closer. He sits there, caught underneath the weight of the request, before slowly inching across the couch. Once he’s close enough, Ryan’s arm hooks around his shoulders and tugs him in. The two of them are sitting basically right next to each other. They’re almost cuddling, which is never a thought that has entered Ray’s brain before. Ryan never seemed like the cuddling type, but without the coat, the press of Ryan’s body against his nearly counts as something soft.

Ryan is talking about something - a play about the last two men left alive on a huge whaling trawler after some unknown accident, isolated near the cliffs of Pandyssia and drifting, unable to actually sail the ship with only two of them. It’s about how the cliffs drive them mad, as they supposedly do, and how they start to hallucinate and attack each other, trapped inside their own heads and horrified by the prospect of someone else existing with them in their insanity.

Ray allows himself to drift and stay quiet, gaze tracing along some of the cracks and dents in the wall across from them.

“Eventually,” Ryan says softly, his fingers moving through Ray’s hair in a transition so casual that he barely noticed until the motion grew a little harsher, “the stage empties of all the props. It’s either them destroying the ship in fits of madness or - and I like this one more - there’s an implication that they might have destroyed their eyes with some of the chemicals used on whaling ships or even just gouged them out as a way of coping with what they saw. But they can still see each other, or at least they know each other so thoroughly that not even blindness can prevent that.”

Ray nods slowly. “Favorite line?” It feels like such an inexperienced thing to ask, but he glances over and sees Ryan’s expression light up. Suddenly, Ray gets the feeling that Ryan isn’t used to people being interested in his hobbies. Ray’s never been the type to care about theater. The only play he’s ever been to involved him shooting a target for a contract hit during the explosive final scene so that no one would notice until later.

But information like this gives him more of an insight than any of their other conversations as to how the man’s mind actually works.

Ryan hums contemplatively. “All of it.” He chuckles a little to himself. “No, but - the play is concerned with sight and eyes. The two characters talk about it a lot, about how disgusted they are to see each other, about how their eyes hurt and how they can or can’t see something that the other person can. It’s absurdist, in that regard. They talk a lot about something eating their eyes - the birds, the sea, even the ship, somehow. But there’s a moment near the end after the stage has emptied and they’re just sitting there, shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the stage, and one of them asks the other where their eyes are. And the other replies with _I don’t know - I think we may have eaten them_.”

Ray laughs despite himself and immediately slams his jaw closed before Ryan can kill him for the offense. It’s not really funny, but it _is_ , in a way that is only funny to people like them and the crew who live in a state of violence nearly every day. Violence is like that - casual. At some point, living with it long enough, you just say things like _cracked open a guy’s skull yesterday_ or _shot a man from a hundred feet up in the air_ like it’s got humor in it because it does.

Ryan shakes his head. “No, no. Laughing’s good. It’s funny. The whole thing is a little bit tragic, a little bit comic, and a little bit horrific. Also a love story, too, I suppose, depending on how close you feel love and hate actually are.”

The two of them sit there in silence. Ray doesn’t have much to say to that.

Finally, he thinks of something to say. It’s something that’s been haunting him for the past week every time he walked into the slaughterhouse and saw Jack changing Ryan’s dressings, pieces of stained cloth dropping into the bucket next to the man’s foot as he worked. “You didn’t have to get yourself shot for me,” Ray says. The words drop thickly in into the air.

Ryan closes the book.

“Well, I didn’t want you to take the bullet either. I was running out of options and time.” Ryan’s tone twists into something rueful. “It wouldn’t be the first or the last time I’ve been shot, so.” Ray’s mind turns over, snapping itself closed around the thought of just how many scars Ryan is hiding underneath his clothes. Ray wants to see, but he doesn’t want to see at once. Or maybe he just kind of wants to see Ryan with fewer clothes on for once.

It’s hard to say at this point with his thoughts nicely muted.

To keep his hands busy, Ray tugs hard on the loose thread. He imagines that if he pulls it hard enough, the whole couch will just unravel underneath him. “Still don’t like it.”

“I’m not a fucking cripple, Ray.” Ryan sounds amused by the statement. “I appreciate the concern, but you don’t have to baby me like everyone else.” It’s true. Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around Ryan, picking their words carefully to avoid upsetting him. Even Ray, in his own way, has been treating Ryan carefully.

Water drips from a hole in the ceiling into a bucket already placed there, evidently for the purpose of catching rainwater. Ray frowns over at it. Rain every day so far this week, intermittent and cold. He hates it here during these periods.

It’s nice to be able to think about innocent things like the weather instead of the heist or Ryan’s wound.

He knows that the drug is mostly out of his system, the high long since dissipated. But if Ray reaches hard enough - if he _pretends_ , then he can imagine that kind of distance quieting his mind down to a low whir. It allows him to reach out and press his fingers along Ryan’s jaw, the touch almost clumsy. Ryan blinks at him, as if trying to translate the motion into something he can understand.

Ray inhales and moves forward. The movement is more of a lunge, bringing his mouth hard against Ryan’s. It’s not clean or even particularly graceful. But Ryan pushes back, using his weight to press him back against the other end of the couch and lean over him at once.

Ryan’s hands slip against Ray’s waistband, untucking his shirt with a surprising amount of surety.

Apparently Ray was wrong about how many steps Ryan was willing to jump. “Your fucking stitches,” he manages even as Ryan’s hands press against his skin, warmth igniting that slow rolling shock in his body that makes him want to cling to Ryan and not fucking let go for anything. Ryan growls a curse and pulls back just a little. Anything strenuous is more than likely to tear Ryan’s stitches at this point, and Ray really doesn’t want to have to explain what they were doing when they stagger back into the slaughterhouse, disheveled, as Ryan risks bleeding out all over again.

Instead, Ryan presses a series of kisses against Ray’s throat. “You’re right,” he mutters, “and I hate it. There’s so much I want to do.”

Ray’s mouth is moving without his mind behind it. There's only that electric want, current pushing him forwards. “Like what?” His fingers are toying with Ryan’s collar as if debating the merits of just unbuttoning his shirt anyway. Underneath, though, is a grotesque reminder of their lives and how damaged they both are. It lurks at the corners of his conscience, ready to clamp down.

The laugh Ryan lets out is nearly tortured. “Fuck, I don’t know. Anything,” he says, leaning back to look Ray right in the eyes. “Everything. I want to see you, all your scars. I want you to tell me about all of them, and then I want to fuck you until you can barely walk, until we risk that Geoff is going to start asking questions about what we’re doing together at night.” The whole time, his hand is sliding up Ray’s leg from knee to upper thigh, stopping mere millimeters away from Ray’s waistband.

_Keep going_ , Ray almost says. He bites down on his lip instead to stop himself.

“If you hurt yourself trying to do this,” he says instead, “Jack is going to fucking kill me before Geoff can kill you.”

“We can’t have that,” Ryan murmurs, thumb pressing a constant steady line of pressure along the inside of Ray’s thigh. But he leans back and Ray’s body nearly follows, seeking out that familiar heat and pressure. “What do you want?”

Ray freezes up at the question. “Same things you want, I think.”

“Good.” Ryan tilts his head as Ray sits up a little more, reducing some of the uncomfortable pressure on his spine. He sees some of the seriousness drain out of Ryan’s expression, replaced with a surprising brightness. “Hey. Never tried sex in a dream before, but maybe it’d be a good idea. Probably won’t have stitches on that side of things. Want to to go for it?” He sounds completely genuine and nearly curious about the idea.

“What,” Ray says flatly.

Ryan laughs and shakes his head. “I’m just fucking with you. Things don’t feel the same in a dream. Does bring up a good point, though - it’ll be easier to pull you into a dream this time. Proximity makes it more accurate, so I won’t accidentally almost drop you into the abyss again. We can try that tonight. There’s some other things I want to talk about."

Perhaps it says something about Ray at this point that entering dreams with Ryan sounds less stressful than fucking him. “Yeah. I mean - what about the Outsider?”

Ryan’s expression immediately sours slightly. He leans all the way back, expression shifting into something contemplative. “I have that old charm repaired, the one that almost shattered. There are some things I can do - move some things outside, make some noise, so to speak. There’s not much we can do to stop him. It’s his space, in the end, but I can try to distract him so we get some time. Or - he might just not show up this time. He’s always there, but he might find it more interesting to watch instead of intervene.”

“Well, we definitely can’t fuck in your dream now,” Ray mutters.

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Not into voyeurism, then?” He sounds nearly curious.

“Not with the fucking Outsider, at least, thanks.”

“Fair.” Ryan’s expression softens by a few degrees. He adjusts his shirt, just leaving it untucked and comfortable. “We should probably make something to eat. Give me a minute to go battle with the stove.”

Ray nods. It’ll give him a minute to recover from whatever this conversation is.

He remains seated on the couch, drawing his legs up towards his chest, and watches Ryan’s back as the man leans over the stove. It’s all cloyingly normal - a man cursing down at the stove as it refuses to light before reaching over and sliding a box of matches out of a drawer. It is something that Ray never thought he would have. He never thought he’d be sitting on someone’s couch, watching as they made dinner for the two of them.

Dying with the crew. That’s how he thought he was going to go out before he hit thirty.

Looking at Ryan like this - sleeves rolled up, shirt untucked and hair a little messy with his expression at most mildly concerned - makes him want something else. He doesn’t even know what that something else is. If Ray had to put a description to this thing that he wants, it brings back thoughts of his childhood, of dappled sunlight and a silence perfect and comfortable to him. It’s probably not even something that’s real.

He wants it anyway.

Ray and Ryan eat in silence. It’s a simple soup with a fish base, as most food here in Dunwall comes from the sea in some way. Ryan reads the whole time, turning pages and leaning back comfortably in his chair.

“This is nice,” Ray manages halfway through his bowl.

Ryan arches an eyebrow. “Nice?”

“Yeah. Quiet without Michael chasing Gavin around or whatever.”

Ryan’s hand traces some old dent in the table. He looks up from his book properly. “You ever thought about getting your own place outside of the slaughterhouse? I’ve been wondering why you all live together. It may make you all work together constantly, but it also seems like a good way to start a few arguments.” The question nearly makes Ray choke on a chunk of potato.

“Fuck,” he coughs. Ryan nudges Ray’s glass of water closer to him. Concern flits across his features. Ray waves it away and clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. We argue a lot. But it’s easier if we just bring everything to the same place, you know, and we don’t have to try and schedule meetings around someone’s toilet fucking exploding or a fire or whatever. It’s just… easier.”

Ryan sets down his spoon with a soft clink. “You’re lying,” he chides, and it’s not even accusatory. At most it’s amused. “But it’s kind of cute, so I’m not that upset. You really like all those idiots that much.”

Ray’s jaw works up and down, trying to decide whether to be outraged about him calling everyone else in the crew _idiots_ or him calling Ray himself _cute_ first. It’s a hard choice. On one hand, he’d defend the honor of the Fakes to the death. On the other hand, calling him cute is an offense that should mean two and a half years in Coldridge, in his humble opinion.

“You’re an asshole,” he finally decides.

Ryan smiles softly, the smallest tilt of his head as an affirmation, and stirs his soup again, spoon clinking up against the sides of the bowl.

In bed, Ryan simply tugs Ray close enough to hold like they’ve been doing it every night since they met. _Just dream_ , he said while getting into something more comfortable, while Ray just ended up wearing one of Ryan’s shirts thrown over his own underwear. _I’ll find you there_.

Currently, Ryan throws an arm over Ray’s body, half-protective and half-just to hold him close, and is pretty much out like a fucking light mere seconds later. Ray, on the other hand, stays stock still and stares up at the ceiling for what feels like forever. The adjustment is apparently seamless for the man next to him, but Ray almost wants to roll away and onto the floor to try and understand what they are at this point.

Ryan’s already so fucking comfortable.

A slightly disturbing thought occurs to Ray, caught as he is in the cage of Ryan’s arms. Maybe the reason that Ryan is so comfortable is simpler than he thinks. Maybe it’s because he’s been here before. And there’s two options - either there’s been _other_ people who have been here, or maybe Ryan’s been dreaming about this since meeting him.

About having him close. About having him, plain and simple.

You want something for long enough, build it up enough in the secret places in your mind, and suddenly it becomes true? Well, that’d be a fucking rush for anyone.

It’s that thought that follows Ray into his dreams, where he opens his eyes and that familiar grey nothingness expands as far as he can see.


	14. the place seems emptied of its totemic power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally updating this! a lot of conversation and a little bit of a break before things start to move very fast in the next few chapters. enjoy this slowness, folks, because it's not going to stay that way forever.
> 
> in this chapter: ryan and ray talk, play around with swords, and an old gift made new changes hands.
> 
> this is now my priority, along with a sequel to my high school raywood thing, because it's good to work on something real and wholesome in between this au. thank you for your patience with my occasional hiatuses - i appreciate it more than i could ever truly say.

As much as Ryan said this time was going to be easier, the transition from waking to dreaming still feels like he’s plummeting.

It’s a drop in his stomach, the gut feeling of _falling_ without any of the real action. Ray staggers against the cobblestones, closing his eyes and sucking in abnormally still air. There’s no taste to the air here still. He opens one eye and then the other. Ryan is visible as a distant and dark figure at the edge of the chunk of land that now exists for them.

Ray glances around. There’s pieces of buildings, ambiguously identified as from Dunwall. It could be any district, any era, any place. He sort of assumed after his first venture out here, into all this half-built space, that every encounter would have to be focused on a moment. Apparently he was wrong. He turns on his heel for a moment to look back at where he arrived. Nothing distinct about it. Half of a streetlamp sits curved towards the abyss, metal bent impossibly far. When he turns back around, Ryan has moved a few feet towards him, leaning against the corner of a ruined building. He waves casually. It’s interesting to see the way Ryan looks when he’s relaxed in a dream - no coat, no gloves, no mask or anything. The same clothes he was wearing around his place. He looks perfectly unassuming.

It’s weird.

Ray almost laughs. He takes a few steps forward, making sure he’s steady. His legs still shake just a little, but it’s manageable. “Where is this supposed to be?” he asks.

Ryan shrugs. “Nowhere in particular.”

“Good.” Ray tucks his hands into his pockets and stiffens his shoulders a little. “I was going to say that if it was supposed to be somewhere specific, you did a piss-poor job this time.”

Ryan shakes his head. “Should probably build up something specific, though. Otherwise it can get a little unstable out here.”

“Unstable?” Ray looks down at the stones beneath his feet, lifting up one boot and then setting it back down carefully. Nothing seems to visibly tremble or shake. “The fuck does that mean? Does the ground just fall apart sometimes?” He steps forward tentatively, almost expecting to have to scramble backwards as the little island they’re on begins to collapse. But nothing happens.

“It’s not that simple. It’s just - less focus means more risk.” Ryan frowns a little and tilts his head up towards the sky. “Let’s go somewhere, then.”

The sky wrenches apart with a scream. Ray does the only thing he can think of - he claps his hands over his ears as pieces of ground grind and push together, plates rubbing up against each other. Eventually he just shuts his eyes because there’s so much going on, and very little of it makes sense - like reality itself is twisting around whatever place Ryan is imposing upon the emptiness.

Ryan’s hand presses against his shoulder. He keeps contact as he circles around behind Ray, arms slipping around his waist to pull him close. It’s meant to be soothing. It is, just a little, enough where Ray cracks open one eye and then the other when it’s quiet enough. He recognizes the architecture almost instantly - Karnaca through and through. It’s not perfect. It feels like something someone would build off of his own descriptions of Karnaca, skewed by years and time and an inability to describe things perfectly. The thought, as vague as it is, drifts and then sticks in the back of his mind.

Ryan’s never been to Karnaca.

“Ryan,” Ray says slowly, turning on the spot, “how the fuck do you know what Karnaca looks like?” Maybe he’s seen it in books, but there’s something to this that seems more real than he’d give a mere illustration credit for.

So this is what genuine embarrassment looks like on Ryan Haywood. That blush is really fucking climbing up to his ears when it wants to. “When I pulled you out of your dream that first time - I saw a bit of this. Just for a minute. Enough to remember, and I’m sure it’s not perfect, but I was mostly going for architecture and style. Sorry if it’s not very good or anything, or if I’ve really fucked something up that badly.”

It’s not a perfect replication. It’s not even a discernible place, and the colors are off by just enough that it messes with Ray’s perception of where he is, precisely. But he doesn’t care in the slightest. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says finally, reaching out to touch the side of a building. It doesn’t crumble away with a touch. Everything is remarkably solid. There’s some metaphor there, one that he’s too distracted to parse. He turns back to look at Ryan again. Ryan’s arms are crossed, the slightest hint of a smile playing on his lips. “It’s really good,” Ray finally adds, hoarse and soft for reasons he can’t begin to explain.

Ryan glances around the small market square he’s built up for them. “There’s things I can’t do,” he finally admits. “I can create isolated moments, but I can’t make it move. I can’t make it any more real or alive than it is right now. So it’s not much, but I hope it’s something.” He sounds a little disappointed about it. But at the same time, Ray really doesn’t want Ryan to try and recreate people that aren’t immortalized as faceless nameless dying Overseers. Actual life besides them here, in this grey abyss, seems more than a little unnerving.

For a while, they start to wander the tiny block of streets Ryan’s built up from nothing, from assumptions and Ray’s old memories.

They end up settling on top of a squat building that’s easy to climb onto. Ray lays flat on his back and stares up at the nothingness. Ryan eventually leans back next to him. The silence is nice, if a little overwhelming. It’s hard to explain missing the usual bustle of the city, but once it’s gone, it leaves a hole in its wake. After a moment, Ryan’s hand reaches over and laces his fingers with Ray’s. The motion is terribly gentle, Ryan not even squeezing his fingers too tightly. The two of them just sit there like that for a while.

If Ray closes his eyes and imagines, he can almost imagine the clean sea air that Karnaca has. It’s different than Dunwall’s air, which tends towards something darker and more like rot. Ryan sighs slightly. “You know, there’s a lot of interesting things to do in dreams. I like to practice in here. Shooting, mostly. And with the things I can do. No one to hurt, and time works… differently. Could spend a whole day in here, probably, and wake up under twelve hours from when I fell asleep.” He’s talking quietly, as if Ray asked. But maybe, as with the theater, he’s just not used to having someone to talk to about these things. It would be Ray’s state if he had never met Michael.

Ray abruptly remembers a rooftop - remembers the way Ryan almost gutted him with a sword when they first met. He pauses, thinks _practice_ , and sits up suddenly. Ryan looks over at him, evidently worried. “Hey,” Ray begins slowly, “you ever taught anyone to fight worth a shit with a sword before?”

Ryan blinks slowly and then starts to smile. “No. Still upset about having to throw yourself off that roof in front of me?”

“Not upset. Just, y’know. Would like to never have to fucking do that again, since I almost broke my ankle the first time, and evidently you’re kickass with a sword.”

“Hm.” Ryan draws his knees closer to his chest, almost about to stand. He pauses, and for a moment, Ray sees the mark on the back of his hand flare up bright for a second. When it goes out, there’s two swords sitting on the roof - equal length and equal weight. “Okay. Let’s see how much work we’re going to have to do.” Ray stares for a moment. He expected Ryan to laugh it off, but here he is, taking it as seriously as he takes anything else that involves Ray. Well. Okay. He’s not going to back down.

The two of them stand up together. Ryan tosses a sword towards him and Ray catches it. It’s not his best work, but it’s at least steady, and he adjusts to the weight quickly enough. Ryan tilts his head, something flickering across his features. “You get people throwing swords at you a lot or something?”

“Some heists just kind of...” Ray begins, and Ryan shakes his head with a grin. Of course he gets it. There’s been a couple times where Ray’s had to travel light, a crossbow and a pistol and nothing else, and Michael has had to throw him a sword while they’re on the run. First time, the sword nearly sliced his hand in half down to the bone. Then they actually fucking practiced, and Ray’s pretty sure he could catch a sword any idiot decided to throw at him now - even Gavin. You learn from your mistakes in Dunwall.

Ryan twirls his sword lightly. “Weight’s good?” he asks.

Ray adjusts his grip on the hilt. “Feels normal, I guess.” He wouldn’t know the difference. He’s the type of guy to scavenge a sword off of a corpse without any regard for weight or any of that high level shit. Ryan, on the other hand, would probably be able to pick up on the most miniscule differences between one sword and the other like it was beamed into his brain just by picking one up.

“Good,” Ryan replies, sharp and clean, and proceeds to try to murder Ray.

It’s more complex than that, obviously, but it feels about that abrupt. Ray’s barely got his sword up and in a position approximating ready when Ryan disappears and reappears barely three feet away, coming in with a heavy overhead strike. Ray says something aloud - not even aware of _what_ \- and brings his blade up to stop the blade from splitting his skull open. He thought they were just going to do some average shit, correcting the way Ray holds a sword or something similar. He ends up having to grip the hilt in both hands and shove to force Ryan back, and the man simply steps back with the push and reorients himself easily.

Fuck. He’s going to have to go on the offensive. Ray’s normal strategy with a sword is survive until he gets an opening to flee, and this is not that.

So he takes Michael’s advice ( _fight dirty if you’ve got to_ ) and comes in low, aiming a strike upwards for the ribs. Ryan blinks once and parries it like it’s nothing, twisting to the side as metal grinds against metal.

“Fucking shit,” Ray snarls, and ducks underneath a vicious pommel strike aimed at the top of his skull.

Ryan begins to force him back along the rooftop. His movements are at first efficient, and they proceed to get flashier and flashier as time goes on. Ray begins to get the distinct impression that Ryan is toying with him, which is only confirmed further when the two of them briefly trap each other near the corner of the building. Ray barely manages to block a slash that probably could’ve taken his head off with the amount of power Ryan threw behind it, and the two of them take a few seconds to push back and forth, Ray’s wrists aching.

Then Ryan smiles just a little wider. He drops the sword and twists to the side all at once. Ray staggers forward, confused, his grip almost slipping on the hilt of his weapon. Ryan’s hand snatches the sword up again as it plummets and he brings it up and around, dramatic, a wide sweep that is definitely aimed for the back of Ray’s neck. He knows it even though he can’t see it.

Cold metal barely touches the back of his neck, and then it’s gone. When he spins around, Ryan’s hands are empty, and he’s grinning.

“You’re a fucking show-off,” Ray decides. Something strange prods at the back of his mind. Ryan’s been smiling the whole time they were sparring, and it doesn’t look unnatural or forced. At most, it’s terrifying, but in a usual Ryan way. He imagines the man in front of him smiling just like that behind the skull mask _every time_ they’ve been in a fight, and it does something odd and dark in Ray’s gut. He isn’t sure if it’s a good feeling or not, but it’s something.

Ryan paces back towards the middle of the rooftop. “While we’re complimenting each other, I’ll have you know you’re scrappy when you’re desperate. Got a good few jabs in there, and there was one move in there that I liked. That upward slash with both hands - simple, but effective. Hard to block properly at that angle.”

“You managed.”

“Had a lot of practice.” He smiles again, softer this time. “By the way - this was a good idea. Most of the time, with the fights I get into, it’s just - one, two, done.” He snaps his fingers. “All of my other… abilities make it easy to get lazy. I don’t exactly get duels or even sparring very often.”

“Could always ask Michael,” Ray points out. “He’s probably the best with a sword besides maybe Geoff, if you can catch him sober.”

“Geoff’s got a military background. Means he’s got the practice, but he’s… limited. Very by the book. I probably should spar with Michael at some point, though.” Ryan rolls his shoulders. “So here’s what I’m thinking about you. You fight scared. It’s not unexpected, since you seem more eager to run from a head-on fight than engage. When you get desperate, you fight a lot smarter. But if you’ve got the room or the space or the time, you really do fight like you’d rather be anywhere else in the world.”

“Unlike someone here,” Ray snaps, “I don’t actually enjoy risking getting myself fucking stabbed, thanks.”

“I don’t enjoy being stabbed,” Ryan says easily. Then he winks. “At least, not very severely.”

Ray lets out a small _ha_. “Very funny. So what can we actually work on here?”

“Making you more comfortable.” Ryan slinks forward a few steps, movements smooth and casual. “You’re fine in terms of stance. You know the basics. Wrists are a little weaker than I’d like, but that just takes practice. And that’s the issue, really - practice and comfort. Both things we can work on.” He seems confident about this.

The sword materializes in Ryan’s  hand, pulling itself back together from nothing. Ray stares at it for a moment, almost enthralled. There’s just an elegance, brutal as it is, in the way things work here. They appear and disappear and yet seem absolutely real and solid. Ryan tosses the sword from one hand to the other and nods slowly. “Let’s start again,” he says. “We’ll take it slower. Relax a little. I’m not actually going to hurt you in here.”

Ray pauses, something sick and made of bile rising up in his gut. _In here_ , Ryan says, and he knows that it’s just some paranoia dredged up from the fucked up beginning of their relationship - but it makes a guy wonder about when they’re not _in here_.

Then he sighs and clenches his fists tight. “Okay.”

——

He doesn’t know how long they spend sparring. He doesn’t get _tired_ in the way he’s used to in here. Everything seems to happen slower - time passes slowly, he tires slowly. It gives a strange surreal quality to everything, even when Ryan picks up the pace and pushes them a few steps closer to the speed of that opening fight. Ray does learn a lot. He realizes how important footwork is to Ryan - how much he uses the placement of his feet to help aid a strike, and how he’s managed to find some fucked up balance between strength and dexterity.

It’s impressive.

Eventually, though, Ryan nods and drops the sword. It disappears before it even hits the ground, and Ray’s hand goes from being wrapped around a familiar hilt to curled awkwardly around empty air. He loosens his fingers and rubs his shoulders. Less tired, sure, but still definitely a little sore.

Ryan grins wickedly. “Sore? No idea how to give a fucking massage, but I could try.”

Ray shakes his head. He’s been watching Ryan’s face most of the time, distracting as it is from all the sword shit. Doesn’t see it as much as he’d like during a heist, what with the mask, but he’s begun to put things together. “I was wondering if we could talk, actually.” There are things he can guess at but never know. It seems easier to talk here, with the thought that the dream will just fall apart eventually. He can ask all the stupid shit he wants, and Ryan will definitely make fun of him, but at least it’s in a separate space. He can pretend it happened to someone else or something.

Ryan nods. “Let’s go somewhere more comfortable, yeah?”

“Sure.” Ray inhales hard and shuts his eyes.

The world falls apart again. The surest thing is Ryan’s hands on both of his wrists, immovable and certain. When things get quiet, Ray dares to open his eyes slowly. They’re just in an apartment - nicer than anything on their side of Dunwall. He was expecting something more obviously weird - and if he glances out the window, he can definitely see the infinite void stretching out forever. But he can ignore that too. Ryan must notice his line of sight, because he steps over and draws the curtains shut.

The lamps all light at once, keeping them from plunging into darkness. Ryan nods, satisfied. “There we go.”

If it wasn’t for the stillness of the air, the strange feeling of existing here, it might almost be enough to fool him. But Ray is inexperienced, not stupid. There’s a difference, after all, and Gavin lives that difference every day.

Ryan settles on one end of the couch, stretching his legs out. He lets one dangle idly off the couch. “C’mon. We can cuddle and shit like normal domestic people do.” Ray laughs despite himself and ends up with his back against Ryan’s chest. He picks up Ryan’s left hand in his and plays with his fingers lightly, staring down at the mark. Eventually he begins to trace the lines and shapes of it, learning the intricacies. Ryan stays quiet for a few moments, letting him work his way through the design.

“It’s going to sound stupid,” Ray says quietly. “Or maybe it’s just me asking it badly. But - you stopped going after Overseers a while ago. You said that to me. But there’s still - you still seem to _enjoy_ killing, if you get what I’m saying. Even when it’s not an Overseer who you’re after. And I just wonder why, sometimes. If it was just revenge, it would be simple. But I don’t think it’s just that.”

Something strange happens to Ryan’s expression as Ray turns onto his side to watch his face. “There’s only a few reasons you’d ask that.” He doesn’t seem angry. He doesn’t seem amused, either. Merely still. “First, you’re scared of it - which you’re not. I’ve seen you terrified. This isn’t that. Second, you’re fascinated. And it’s not that either. You haven’t thought about it enough, because if you did, you’d be able to answer that without asking me and it might even lead you back around to the first one. Third, there’s a part of you that recognizes it, and maybe even likes it. Damage recognizes damage. And if that’s the case, which it is - wondering why seems a little wasteful, but maybe it’s not unexpected. Most stories would make this a turning point. So: been reading a lot of two-bit penny dreadfuls, Ray?”

The Ray of a few months ago might have gotten pissed off and stormed out at this kind of playful shit. Current Ray, however, a little wiser and a lot more educated about Ryan, can fully recognize this as the man toying with him and teasing. Sure, he’s being an asshole, but it’s up to Ray to decide whether to take the bait or not. He stares at the curtains for a moment, considering. Then he chuckles and sighs. “You’re fucking with me.”

“A little bit,” Ryan agrees. “But in all seriousness, I wish I could give you a good answer. I can’t. I mean - I don’t think about it all that much.”

“Now you’re really fucking with me.”

“Nah. I’m serious. It’s just - why think about it all that much, if I know it’s not going to change? Liking killing isn’t isolated to me. There’s Bottle Street gang members who get off on making someone swallow glass and watching them choke and die. I figure everything I do at least has something elegant to it.”

Strangely detached, but also not unfair. Ray stares into the middle distance. “Isn’t it weird, though? To just live with that? I’m sure you weren’t always like that. Or. Maybe you were. Guess I shouldn’t make assumptions.” Assumptions, lately, have only led to him almost fucking dying or getting into stupid arguments. So he’s going to play it safe here.

“Tell me,” Ryan says quietly, “how you’re feeling about Firland. About killing him.”

Ray freezes. Internally, the motion is more like a pained wince. “I honestly haven’t been thinking about it.” So much has happened - tending to Ryan, the upcoming heist, trying to deal with the little sting of guilt every time he dumped out that metal bucket with some used dressings piling up in the bottom - that he legitimately hasn’t had time to think about it.

“Huh.” The smugness is back. “Guess you and I are pretty similar about that.”

Okay. Point fucking made. Ray sighs and adjusts his position a little, stretching out further. Ryan’s fingers play idly across his skin, pressure light but pointed. The two of them sit in silence for a while. Ray lets his mind drift idly. He has time to think here. It’s weird, to realize that this space is actually great for that. He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him the whole time.

Ryan’s voice interrupts his reverie. It’s a good interruption, though, his tone slipping into the cadence it always uses when telling a story. “You know, I almost got out once.”

“Of?”

Ryan waves a hand at the corner of Ray’s vision. “Crime. Murder. All of it. I tried to get out right after the plague. Had been running around doing all this shit for years, and I figured it wasn’t sustainable.” He sighs deeply. “I _know_ it isn’t sustainable. So I tried to bow out. I was with a group before then, and I tried to disappear. Didn’t do a good enough job. They thought I betrayed them and came after me. Had to kill all of them. The last one of ‘em got me pretty good.” He rolls up his right sleeve, proffering his arm slightly. Ray awkwardly turns to look, and blinks down at the long scar along Ryan’s arm. It’s jagged and long, a vertical slice from wrist to elbow. He can imagine how much it must’ve bled. He can imagine the tendons torn apart, ragged and stringy. “I had even been avoiding using the mark for a while. Again, trying to be normal.”

“But you had to.” Ray reaches over and gently traces the raised tissue with a finger. “That’s what I’m guessing.”

Ryan’s smile is clearly audible. “Yeah. And then I realized how much I missed all of it. Like an addiction. It’s terrifying and thrilling, to be able to see the world like that, as a series of reactions to things I can do. Like when you drop something in a pond and it ripples, but destructive.”

“What’d you do to the guy?”

He looks up. Ryan’s eyes are distant and closer to grey in the light, eyes focused towards the curtains. “Strangled him,” he says quietly, a million miles away. “Could’ve used the mark. Could’ve done it a lot faster and cleaner. But I was as furious then as I’d been right when the Overseers showed up on my family’s doorstep. So I put my hands around his throat and I kept them there until he stopped struggling. Wrapped the corpse up with sheets and weighed it down in the river with stones. I don’t think anyone’s found it - or if they did, it was too waterlogged to yield anything useful.”

“Why’d they think you betrayed them?”

Ryan’s entire body stiffens. “That’s a complicated story. I don’t actually know, but I have some theories.”

“Kind of ominous,” Ray jokes.

It draws a small genuine chuckle from Ryan’s throat. The noise is something of a relief in the weight of the moment. “I never got a straight answer. It seemed to be a lot of implication and not a lot of evidence, but they were convinced anyway. Which makes me think if it was. Y’know.” His fingers flex, tendons in his hand raising some parts of the mark, marring the clean lines. “He wants people to be interesting. I was getting boring, trying to find a normal life, a job, something. Anything. So I figure I should warn you. If whatever this is between us becomes a long-term arrangement, we’re probably never going to get the little house in the middle of the city, acting like things are normal and doing what people usually do.”

Ray shrugs. “To be honest, I barely remember what a normal life was like.”

A low chuckle vibrates through Ryan’s chest. Ray can feel it between them. “One of us was too young to remember the last time things were normal, and the other one can’t actually manage it without almost getting himself killed. Aren’t we a pair?”

“That’s fucked up,” Ray agrees.

Something about that, maybe the flippant tone or the abruptness of it after Ryan offering a pretty poetic description, seems to trigger Ryan to start laughing. It’s a genuine laugh that climbs surprisingly high. He draws in a shuddering breath to calm himself down. Finally the room falls silent for a little while, something calm and comfortable coming to light in the aftermath.

“How do you feel about the heist?” Ray asks.

Ryan shrugs. “It’s a heist. I don’t have strong feelings either way. Part of me thinks we should have a seventh guy for this. But I’m sure we’ll manage to pull it off.”

Ray shakes his head. “I don’t like it. Hitting the royal bank, even a smaller branch of it available to the public, feels different than going after somewhere private. I’m not saying I won’t do it, or that I think it’s going to go badly. But it just seems like everything’ll happen faster, including any retaliation.”

“Probably.” Ryan tilts his head. “Guess we should be thankful we practiced with those swords today, right?”

“Guess so.”

Ryan’s arm hooks gently over Ray’s shoulder, pulling him back until he’s pretty much laying against Ryan, pinning him there against the couch. Ryan’s hand presses against his stomach, idle but present. They don’t talk for a long while. For a moment, Ray just drifts, enough that everything seems to blend together.

The last thing Ryan says before they wake up is lost underneath the strange way everything starts to melt, but Ray can see it in his eyes: immeasurably fond and genuine, a look like he hates to lose this state that they have been given.

——

“I made coffee,” Ryan says softly.

By the time Ray pried himself out of Ryan’s legendarily comfortable bed, the man himself was already moving around his small kitchen, kettle whistling as water began to heat up. He stared up at the ceiling for a long while, examining old cracks and thinking about the night. His dreams aren’t normally as clear as they are when Ryan pulls him into that other space. It’s a weird feeling, to remember all the events there as clearly as he remembers yesterday or even right now.

He’s barely out of bed, feet pressing against the rug, when Ryan approaches with the coffee. He’s been talking quietly all morning, something sleepy and almost soft about his features. Ray’s been trying to memorize that look, the way his voice has turned quiet and contemplative.

The two of them sit together out on the balcony again while the sun rises, drinking coffee together. Ryan has a strange assortment of mugs - all mismatched and likely stolen. Most people would be put off by drinking out of what is, most likely, a dead man’s mug. Ray, however, is not quite that fucking discerning in his choice of china. The dim light throws warmth across Ryan’s features and Ray watches for a moment, entranced. Then he pulls his attention back to his coffee, hands clasped around the mug.

“Before we go,” Ryan says when they slip back inside, “I’ve got something for you.”

“You really need to stop getting me shit. I haven’t bought you a single fucking thing yet.” Now he’s going to have to actually think about what Ryan would like. Maybe theater tickets, if Ray can talk to Jack - because Jack always knows a guy who knows a guy, and that guy is somehow involved with the arts in Dunwall.

Ryan grins. “It’s not technically something new.” He opens a drawer off to the side - one of a whole set, and begins to rummage. Ray peers over his shoulders and blinks slowly. There’s not just one charm there. There’s _dozens_ , thrown haphazardly into a drawer. He closes it and reopens the top one before fishing one out. “Here,” he says, holding it out.

It’s the same charm. Ray can see the slightly paler scar along the surface, where metal and bone have been fused together again.

“Shit,” Ray mumbles, fingers easily fitting around the charm. “I forgot about it.”

“I didn’t.”

Before they leave that morning, Ray slips the charm back into his coat pocket. The weight is perfectly reassuring, as always, and if he slips his hand into his pocket, being able to feel the metallic edges and weight makes something settle in his chest. Ryan smiles slightly at the motion, the expression crinkling the corners of his eyes slightly. Ray exhales and adjusts the way the coat sits on his shoulders, compensating for the return of that weight.

“Ready?” Ryan asks, preparing to face the day, and Ray nods.


	15. to every dead friend you have

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so god damn sorry about how long this took - the spring semester started about four weeks ago and it's been busy since then. i also had to play the death of the outsider standalone game for some lore-related stuff, even though i've always played it a little fast and loose with lore. i've waited to post this until i had at least part of the next chapter written, which in itself took a while, but i'm back! i'm here! the boys are back! plot's happening! revelations! new factions!

No one asks questions about what Ray and Ryan were doing. They come back with boxes, mostly some weapons that Ray’s never seen before and some things that Ryan thought Jack might like, and apparently that’s good enough for everyone. A part of him is concerned about this. Ryan’s pulling out weapons he’s never seen before, strange and almost entirely clockwork. It takes turning one over and finding how much gold inlay has been worn away for him to realize what these are: they’re Overseer weapons.

It explains the quality, the color scheme, the strangeness, and why Ryan has a frankly unsettling amount of them. There are a lot of weapons belonging to dead Overseers here.

He picks one up. It’s an impressive gun, outfitted with about eight more attachments than is strictly necessary, the barrel painted bright gold. He hates it. It’s ostentatious and stupid, and not in a fun joking way. Whoever owns this thinks they genuinely deserve a golden gun. For a moment he dangles it from between his thumb and forefinger awkwardly, disgusted to even be holding it.

It’s something Gavin would love. They have to dispose of it before he notices.

Ryan moves over next to him, setting more and more weapons out on the table. Carefully crafted metal covers the map of Dunwall, obscuring it under sheer firepower. He lays out a few swords, matching gold inlay on the handles. “Like what you see?” he asks, peering over at the gun.

Ray drops it onto the table with a resounding clunk. “Actually, I hate it, but I’m thinking of using it as proof to Jack that painting the grip of every one of my pistols pink is not the worst thing I could do.”

Ryan stops in the middle of putting down a frankly wicked-looking knife, nearly as long as his forearm. He simply grasps it awkwardly, seemingly unsure what to do with it in the face of this new information. “... Painting your guns pink?”

“Bright pink,” Ray agrees.

Jack, from the corner of the room, drops one of his tools onto his workbench. It clatters loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. “No,” he snaps, not even turning around as he picks up another tool. If it’s possible to passive aggressively hold something, he’s managing it. “I am _not_ going on that trip to buy obnoxious pink paint for you.”

“I’ll buy it.” Ray and Ryan say the sentence simultaneously. They glance at each other, conspiratorial, and Ray marvels at how _young_ Ryan looks when he’s really joking around. Years and time and trauma all stripped away, leaving a man who, in another lifetime, would have a pretty girl on his arm and a lifetime of opportunities. Instead, they’re here, conspiring to buy bright pink paint for Ray’s well-used pistol and crossbow. He knows what timeline he would take again and again in a heartbeat.

Jack mutters some curses and shoves some more tools around just to make noise, not doing anything in particular.

Geoff and Gavin push the slaughterhouse door open with a creak, Geoff holding it open as Gavin struggles inside with some more supplies. Michael is out collecting the last few dues that are normally scheduled for a Wednesday. Can’t let their schedule change too much, of course, because it might reveal that a heist is happening within the next forty-eight hours. So even as nothing is normal, it has to look normal.

The contents of the box Gavin’s carrying spill out across the remaining space on the table. Half of it is normal groceries - food and pens and basic supplies. The other items that he begins to dig out of the bottom of the box are what they really need. It’s ammunition. Ryan nods to himself and moves a box closer, opening it. Rounds rattle around, shot through with that sickly bright blue of whale oil.

“Geoff,” Jack says, turning to face everyone else, “Ray’s threatening to paint his guns pink again.”

“It’s not a threat, Jack.” Ray begins to stack some of the ammunition in the center of the map, a carefully constructed tower of small boxes. “It’s a promise for whenever you stop being a closed-minded fuck.” That draws a wry chuckle from Geoff, shaking his head as he ducks back into his office for a moment.

It’s good.

They have planned as much as they can. The heist requires a lot from each of them individually. It requires every one of them to be at the absolute top of their game - because, as Geoff puts it, if they can do this and actually get away with it, they could probably buy a new base with properly separate rooms for everyone.

By now, Ray would kill for a single dividing wall, even a thin one, between Gavin and Michael and all the dumb shit they get up to every second of the day.

——

That night, he dreams of the same thing he almost always dreams of before a heist - a neverending cacophony of things going wrong. He twists left when he should twist right and a sword plants itself right through his lung. He can hear his breath rattling - and then he’s on a rooftop, intact and breathing. But, outside of himself, he watches as a crucial shot bounces uselessly off a wall and someone shoots Michael through the throat, blood spraying beautifully through the air.

Death and more death. He has to claw his way out of it.

But of course he doesn’t. It drowns him every time until he wakes up gasping and almost shaking, immediately upright, sweating underneath the blankets.

It’s early enough that everyone within view is still asleep. Michael is on his stomach, face half-buried in his pillow and snoring loud enough to shake the fucking rafters. Gavin has one arm dangling off of his bed, an inch away from brushing against the floor. Ray makes a mental note to stick his hand into some freshly collected seawater in a little bit.

Slowly he slips out of bed and steps into the main room.

Ray freezes.

Geoff is clearly visible in the corner, his back to Ray, but the shape of his body reveals that he definitely hasn’t fallen asleep slumped over. That never happens. Usually Geoff’s locked in his office, asleep in his chair. Ray steps closer, making sure to make his steps loud enough so that Geoff doesn’t just whirl around and shoot him.

“Jack?” Geoff asks, tone practically expectant.

“Nah,” Ray mumbles, keeping his voice soft enough to not wake up anyone else. “Sorry, Geoff. Can I sit down?” He circles around Geoff’s still form to place his hands on the back of the opposite chair, touch tentative against the old wood.

Geoff makes an expansive gesture. “Sure.”  
Ray just picks the chair up about a centimeter off the ground and softly sets it back down. Something about that - whether it’s the awkwardness of the motion or the clear signal that Ray cares about everyone else getting some actual sleep - makes Geoff’s mouth quirk up at the corner. He sighs as Ray settles in his chair. “Can’t sleep either?”

“Nope.” Ray picks at a loose splinter on the table carefully. “That’s normal, though. You aren’t usually out here. What’s up?”

Geoff seems to be looking past him at the wall. “I’m hearing things that I don’t like, Ray.” Then he pauses, tone perfectly calm. “Do you trust Ryan?”

“Fuck yeah, I do.” The question itself is almost appalling. Something sick and dark that Ray thought had been killed starts to rise up in his throat ( _not actually going to hurt you in here_ ). He trusts Ryan implicitly. And Geoff trusts everyone that he’s let this close in the crew. If he didn’t, Ryan would long since be dead. “Why?”

Geoff groans and buries his face in his hands for a moment. He looks up again. “We’ve been getting attention with every heist. You know that. We’re not a big deal because we don’t take up territory and we’re not out killing civilians in the street. We do things bigger and selectively. But - we hit big targets. And ever since we first brought up this whole thing about the royal bank, I’ve been hearing rumors that people _know_ about it. By people, I mean the Watch, and maybe even the Overseers. So I’ve been looking around the room, considering the possibility of someone here backstabbing us. And it’s not you or Michael. Not Jack. Gavin could be a possibility out of sheer fucking stupidity, because you know he never shuts up, but he doesn’t fuck up that bad even drunk off his ass. The only one I can’t get a fucking read on is Ryan.”

“Geoff,” Ray begins, a chill settling into his bones.

“And I just - look at that fucking mask. It’s about two degrees away from an Overseer mask, and maybe it’s funny to him, but it’s getting way less fucking funny to me.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“How the fuck do you know?”

Something defensive claws its way out of Ray’s mouth. “Look, if you’re so fucking worried, why not call it off? We can push it back, we can reschedule. We’ve done it before.”

“Six years!” Geoff snaps, his voice briefly rising. He glances around the still quiet room and leans in closer, descending into a furious hiss. “Six _years_ , Ray. That’s how often everything lines up here with the shipments from Serkonos and the vineyards in Morley depositing whatever tithes they’ve got to the crown, and I just…” He sucks in a breath. “It’s a one time opportunity. In six years we might not have the same contacts or the same supplies. You know that. I know that.”

“We might not be alive in twenty-four hours,” Ray points out, “if you go through with something you’re this worried about. So who got the info to begin with?”

“That’s the fucking thing. The second I started hearing this shit, it stopped. Three days later, I’m still trying to get to the bottom of these rumors, and no one can tell me a damn thing.”

Rumors like that don’t just stop unless one of two things are happening. Either they were false and someone powerful enough to stop them in their tracks intervened, or they were _true_ and, again, someone powerful enough to stop them in their tracks intervened. Ray stares down at the table, the candle flickering in between them.

He rubs his eyes. “Ryan fucking loathes the Overseers and the Watch,” he says firmly. “I’ve heard him talk about it. I’ve _seen_ it, Geoff. He has every reason to hate them, and not a single one to betray us for them.”

“I hope you’re right.” Geoff sounds skeptical but hopeful. “I really fucking do.”

Ray reminds himself of that simple fact: all the heist requires is for every one of them to be in peak condition and willing to improvise just a little in case of emergency. If they manage that, then they’ll get out of this breathing.

——

The first step is simple. They slip onto the transport trains ferrying the biyearly shipments of metal from Serkonos to the bank and wait. There’s too much for the guards to handle, so they’re basically just assumed to be valid if they’ve got the Serkonan stamp on them. It’s a cramped fit, the six of them divided into two groups of three. Ray is crammed in between Michael and Gavin, the only sound the grinding of the train against its tracks and the three of them breathing.

Wait until the second stop. The first one is the customs check, which, today, entails one guy glancing at the side and ushering it through.

Ray leans back and lets his head rest against the cool metal. His crossbow sits awkwardly in his lap, sharp angles digging into his thigh and his elbow. The train is starting to slow to a halt. Second time now. He looks over at Michael, just visible with the way his eyes have adjusted to the darkness.

His breathing quickens just slightly.

Slower. Slower. Then the whole train jerks as it comes to a stop, same as last time. Michael holds up three fingers. Then two. Then one. He reaches up and grabs the emergency latch on the inside of the lid. According to Jack, they installed those after a kid got curious and almost died in one of the trains.

The lid grinds open with a whine. The lights are almost blinding after all that darkness. Ray peers up over the lid. It’s clear, as they were told. They have to get out before the train starts moving again, leading them to the wrong place. It certainly looks like the interior of the shipping section of the royal bank - all nice marble and gold trimming. He climbs out and waits for the other two to tumble out onto the floor.

“Where are they?” Michael hisses. He reaches up to grab the handle welded to the outside of the train’s lid and tugs it back down with a clang.

Jack peers out from behind some boxes and gives them a quick wave. He puts a finger to his lips, and the rest of them immediately head over to follow. The beauty of this heist is that they’re technically not breaking into the bank - that is to say, they’re not breaking into the part of the bank with customers and more trouble than they need. They’re breaking into an area that specific handles massive foreign deposits - from Morley, from Gristol, and from Serkonos. It is the engine that keeps the businesses of the Isles connected and running.

They encounter one guard on the other side of the door leaving the shipping area. .

Encounter is, perhaps, a strong word. They open the door about a quarter of an inch, quiet as possible, and Ray takes the shot through the crack in the door. The bolt lands with a thunk in his throat and he topples, choking and gurgling slightly. Geoff throws the door open and Ryan and Michael drag the man back outside, nestling him behind some boxes. It all works like clockwork.

Two lefts, and then the first right.

Some bank worker walks out of the bathroom and freezes, and before anyone else can move, Ryan smoothly presses the tip of his sword against his throat and presses a finger to the mouth of the mask. The man stays silent, eyes enormous and terrified. Ray can see his hands shaking. Then Michael steps behind him and pulls him into a vicious-looking chokehold. They leave the body inside a closet full of papers and other supplies, head resting gently up against an enormous crate. They really do try their best not to kill civilians.

“It’s too quiet,” Jack mutters.

“Maybe we’re just lucky,” Ray snaps, and Geoff throws a cautionary look back at him.

According to their information, checked over and over again in the last few weeks, the recent deposits from Morley’s ridiculous number of vineyards are kept isolated from the rest, considering the volume of coin. They’ve got the exact room number - twenty-four, every year.

Gavin picks the lock while the rest of them keep watch. His tongue catches between his teeth as the lock jiggles. Ray can see Ryan’s impatience in body language alone as he scans the hallway. He wants to get out of here as much as the rest of them too. It’s just too fucking quiet. Where are all the workers? Where’s all the fucking noise and bustle?

It’s not a bank holiday.

The lock pops open. Ray feels some tension leak out of his shoulders, and Jack lets out an audible breath.

There’s boxes. A lot of boxes. Geoff whistles quietly to himself. The amount of boxes, to be honest, is the only reason Jack is here with them and not on his usual detail of guarding the escape vehicle. They’re heading on foot through the sewers anyway this time, so they might as well use everyone’s hands to carry whatever’s valuable.

“Check the boxes,” Ryan says immediately as soon as all of them are inside. Michael shuts the door and nods. Geoff is already wedging the end of his sword under the lid of one of the boxes, shoving it in almost up to the hilt and pulling upwards. The lid pops off in a messy explosion of wood and splinters. Guess they’re not taking that box with them.

The look on Geoff’s face is something Ray won’t ever forget, not until he dies.

It goes from relieved to blank in under a second, and then transforms a degree further into utter fury.

“Uh, Geoff?” Michael asks, which is about as far as he gets before Geoff kicks one of the boxes. It _snaps_ rather than slides with any weight, the toe of his boot going straight through the side and leaving a foot-sized hole. Even from this distance, Ray can see the issue. There’s no glitter of coin in the light. There’s just darkness and empty space.

Nearby, Gavin wedges open another crate with Michael’s help. Empty.

Ryan’s voice is the next thing to interrupt the utter silence. “We’ve been fucking played.”

“Oh,” Geoff snarls, “ _have we_ , Ryan? Funny that you, of all the people here, should fucking mention that.”

“Not now,” Ray immediately interrupts. “Geoff, for fuck’s sake, not right now.” All of them are looking around the room, half-expecting guards to start spilling in from some unknown entrance. Geoff, meanwhile, petulantly shoves over another box. The lid pops open, barely even closed, and it’s just as empty as the last three.

“Fuck,” Michael hisses. “What the fuck do we do?”

Ryan’s expression is unknowable behind the mask, but his tone says it all. “Break the windows. Fuck our planned escape route. If someone’s played us this badly, they probably know the exact method we were going to use to leave.” Geoff shouts a curse and swings wildly at a box, his blade getting stuck halfway through. Gavin has his pistol out, constantly swinging to check new angles of attack. It’s almost comical, the six of them a perfect unit whose synchronicity has been destroyed by one shift. Ray almost laughs to try and release the painful tension in his chest. He can hear his heart thumping away, quick and terrified.

There isn’t even anyone here to identify as the enemy, and that somehow makes things worse.

“Ryan’s right.” Jack looks around the room. “We’ve got windows. Could break them, but that would gather attention. We need to —”

“Fuck!” Geoff _screams_.

As if on cue, the door clicks open.

All of them turn to look at the doorway as one awkward unit, Geoff pausing in struggling to pull his sword back out of the crate.

A woman stands in the doorway.

Her hair is long and dark, cut just past her shoulders, and Ray’s first thought is _she’s pretty, what the fuck_. There’s a sharply audible intake of breath to his right, which means the source is definitely Ryan. She is mostly wearing white, with sharp black gloves reaching up to her elbows to interrupt the color scheme.

“Who the fuck are you,” Geoff asks. His voice is so low and hoarse that it comes off as more of a growl.

Her gaze passes distantly over all of them. There’s something strange about her that Ray cannot place. She stands nearly delicately, her hands clasped neatly in front of her. “So you’re the Fakes. Just six of you?” Her lips purse slightly. “I really don’t know why the Overseers needed the Oracular Order to get involved to deal with some petty criminals.”

“The fucking Oracular Order?” Ryan spits. There is something else in his voice, something so _other_ that Ray can't even begin to place it.

Ray thinks about what he’s heard about the Oracular Order - the equals of the Overseers, all women, usually kept to isolated places, seeing astonishing visions of the future and advising their brothers in arms on the best course of action to destroy the Outsider. Sometimes they leave their chapels, and it never means anything good for anyone involved.

The woman’s expression shifts minutely at Ryan’s voice. Then she smiles, and it’s just about the most terrifyingly charming and genuine thing Ray’s ever seen. “Isn’t the mask a little much, Ryan?”

Ray’s heart plummets. All of Geoff’s suspicions rise up to jab him in the throat.

Ryan doesn’t say anything. Everyone is staring at him now, including Ray, and the mask obscures any chance they have of being able to understand his expression. Then he simply adjusts his hold on his sword, his voice smooth and confident. “Get the hell out of the way.” It is not a request. He takes a step forward. The woman does too, out of the doorway, and about eight Watch members spill into the room to create a clumsy perimeter. Ray tightens his grip on his crossbow before swinging it onto his back. He and Michael draw their swords at the same moment, almost immediately back to back, like the old days. Gavin’s index finger twitches on his pistol.

 _We are not going to die in here_ , Ray decides. He will murder every single Watch member in this room to get them all out alive.

“Arrest them,” the woman orders, “or kill them if they resist, which I’m sure they probably will.”

Then Ryan moves.

He steps forward, left boot hitting the floor, and then he’s gone.

Ray scans the room on instinct, more used to Ryan’s disappearing acts than he’ll ever admit, but he doesn’t really need to. In the next second, there’s one gunshot, and the skulls of three different Watch members explode. He sees Ryan behind the one furthest to the left, pistol raised. There is a single moment of absolute silence. There is blood everywhere, even staining the woman’s perfectly white clothes.

Fear settles into Ray’s gut. It is the first time Ryan has ever obviously displayed his abilities front and center before the crew, blatant and paralyzingly real. The five remaining guards glance at each other, grip on their weapons wavering, confused and more than a little terrified.

The woman frowns. “Well. I suppose I see why they asked me to come here.”

He can just see Geoff in his peripheral vision. He watches his expression move from confused to determined. “Windows,” he shouts, “ _now_.”

Every heist feels like this, even the botched ones - a single moment of silence and an explosion of action. Gavin shoots the man right in front of him without a second thought, and Michael grabs his collar to pull him along. Jack pushes Geoff forward, making sure he gets out first. Always thinking about everyone else. Ray turns and sprints, and suddenly Ryan is about a step ahead of him - and then even further ahead. The window to the left breaks underneath Michael’s weight, and ahead, Ryan throws a hand forward and shatters the window without laying a finger on it before vaulting through.

Shots ring overhead. Ray ducks down and throws himself through the broken window, shards of glass scraping against his legs and arms. His heart feels like it’s about to explode, and that feels good. The scrapes along his arms are definitely going to bleed, and that feels good too. He feels something hit his shoulder, a moment of impact, and then pain screams up his spine. His body twists as he hits the old cobblestones, and he pushes himself up. He has to keep going, or else he’s dead.

And he’s not dead. He’s more alive now than he is during any other moment in his everyday life.

Details leap out at him. Michael’s got a hand clamped around the front of his arm. Ray can see the bloodstained hole through his shirt. He’s injured too. Fuck. They can’t stay on the streets. Improvise. Think about it.

He looks around, thinks _streets_ , and spots a small alley that looks like it was half-built over during the reconstruction after the plague. Tight fit, but it’ll make them harder to follow.

“This way!” Ray shouts, and everyone scrambles to a halt. All of them know what Ray is - a gutter rat, a fucking street kid who has never completely grown up out of that, and that he will always see the city slightly differently from the rest of them. Ray sprints down an alley, glancing around. There’s Watch starting to swarm the side of the bank that they burst out of. No time to waste.

If they take this corner, they’ll swerve right onto a main street. Bad idea with injuries. all the attention in the world focusing on them bleeding out in front of civilians. But if they turn to the left, take a sharp right, there’s —

“Here!” Ray’s fingers pull at the heavy metal cover. It’s the second time he’s had to escape through the sewers recently. Even pulling at the hunk of metal causes his right shoulder to nearly go numb with pain so acute that it almost feels like nothing at all. But then Ryan’s right there, pulling the cover off and shoving it aside. His hand settles against Ray’s back and pushes him forwards.

Ray does a head count as everyone else climbs the ladder. He counts five, not including him, which brings the final total up to six. Ryan yanks the cover back into place before he gets off of the ladder.

It leaves them in silence for a moment.

In the dim light, Ray sees Ryan tug off the mask for a moment, probably just to breathe. His eyes are shut, and he seems to be breathing.

Geoff’s voice echoes through the sewer. “Give me updates. Who’s hurt?”

Ray goes first. “In the shoulder. Think the bullet’s stuck.”

“Right through the arm.” Ray can see Michael clutching at his arm even as he says it. “Clean, but hurts like a bitch. Bleeding a lot.”

“Scraped up but fine,” Gavin says softly.

Jack shrugs. “Okay. Twisted my ankle, I think, during the jump out the window, but nothing dangerous.”

Ryan’s voice is the most distant he’s ever heard. “Lower leg. More of a deep graze than anything, but it’s probably bleeding a lot.”

Everyone turns to look at him. Ryan looks back at them all, calm and still. His expression betrays nothing. Ray surreptitiously looks over at Geoff. The man’s expression is angry and more than a little afraid, but he doesn’t seem to be quite as furious as he did in the bank. All he says, after a few moments of silence punctuated by the sound of dripping water, is: “When we get back to the slaughterhouse, you are explaining fucking everything to everyone here. All of it.”

“I know,” Ryan says, sounding so exhausted that a pang of nervous sympathy rises up in Ray’s gut. He hangs towards the back of the line, waiting for everyone else to tiredly fall into single file along the side of the sewer.

Ryan’s mask dangles forlornly from his hand. He looks at Ray for a long moment, evidently expecting something. Instead, Ray merely reaches forward and squeezes the hand not concerned with keeping the mask from dropping into the filthy water.

Genuine relief flits across Ryan’s features, and he smiles.

Then they start the long trek home.

——

It takes them forty-five minutes to make it back to the slaughterhouse. They crawl out of the sewers aching and bleeding. It’s not as bad as it could’ve been, but the lack of security - of knowing that someone well and truly knows them well enough to predict a heist, somehow - makes it not feel secure in the slightest. Ray notices that Geoff checks each door in the slaughterhouse three times over before he lets himself sit down, even as Jack tends to each of the wounded in turn.

At the end of it all, exhausted and sitting next to two different buckets with bloody cloth and a few pieces of glass he had to pull out of Ray’s arm, Jack sets his glasses down on the table and rubs his eyes.

Some informal delineation has been created in the room. No one seems comfortable standing on the side of the main table that Ryan’s sitting at. Everyone else has gathered on the other side, refusing to approach. Ray stares at that separation for a while, all that empty space. Ryan seems unconcerned, the mask thrown onto the table and his gloved hand resting next to it. Ray intimately knows what lurks underneath the soft leather, permanently staining his skin.

 _Fuck this_ , he decides, and crosses over to sit next to Ryan.

He feels four other pairs of eyes on him as he sits and doesn’t move.

Underneath the table, Ryan’s hand creeps over to his knee. Ray glances over at him and sees the fondness in his expression.

Ryan’s hand moves back, though, when Geoff finally approaches the table once again. He yanks his pistol out of his holster, and Ray tenses despite himself. No one says anything. Geoff doesn’t raise the gun. He just keeps it by his side, the threat of possible violence lurking in his hands. “Talk,” he says to Ryan. His tone is not one to be denied.

“Which part do you want to hear first?”

Geoff leans forward slightly. “Whatever the fuck you think is the most important part to start with. And I will not hesitate to shoot you, Haywood - right now if I don’t like what you have to say, or later, if I find out you decided to lie to me.” It’s the version of Geoff Ray hasn’t seen since they first got a real foothold here in Dunwall, brutal and furious. He almost wants to warn Ryan to tread very fucking carefully, because this is the version of Geoff that would shoot a man for looking at him the wrong way.

Ryan runs a hand through his hair. “I know what you’re all probably thinking. That woman knew my name and none of yours. And yes, we do know each other. But it’s complicated, because as far as I knew, she’s been dead since the worst months of the plague.” Something tugs at Ray’s memory. “So let me start with everything I don’t know. I don’t know how she’s still alive. I don’t know how she ended up with the Oracular Order. I don’t know how she found out about our plans, or what the circumstances behind that are.”

Suddenly, Ray remembers. His entire body twists and tenses, fingers curling into fists in his lap. He knows this story. He just _knows_ , somehow, the exact beats of the tale that Ryan’s going to hit before he does.

“Here’s what I know. The last time I saw her,” Ryan continues, “she was being forced into one of those buildings that they kept the infected in to try and contain the plague. People don’t come out of those buildings unless it was as a corpse on a cart. I broke in a week later, just to see if I could find her alive or dead, and a fucking weeper almost killed me about two steps past the window. I never found her.”

There it is.

Ryan leans back in his chair. “Her name is Meg Turney, and for about a year of my life, she was the closest thing I had to a friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Work title and chapter titles both from [here](http://kylebarbour.org/tmg/mirror/wsabh-microsite.txt).


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